


Anchored Home in an Interstellar Sea

by notsodarling



Series: sending out my satellite call [1]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Background Jenna Cameron/Maria DeLuca/Gregory Manes, Background Relationships, Canon-Typical Violence, Clay Manes - Freeform, Flint Manes - Freeform, Gen, Guns, Gunshot, Handwavy Alien Science, Involuntary Injection, Jesse Manes is a Human Rights Violation, Kidnapping, M/M, Mentions of Caulfield, Miscommunication, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin, Pining, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Two Idiots Who Just Need To Talk, Two Idiots Working Out Their Issues, background Liz Ortecho/Max Evans - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:53:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 43,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26075203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsodarling/pseuds/notsodarling
Summary: Alex stands in full view of the hallway camera, raising his hand and reaching behind him to press on the soulmark that appeared on the skin of his right shoulder eleven years ago. He stares directly at the camera and thinks of Michael.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: sending out my satellite call [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2144970
Comments: 107
Kudos: 151





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a soulmate au!
> 
> Some quick notes: this picks up post-Season 1 where Max has been brought back to life, Michael and Maria have dated and broken up, Maria knows about aliens already, and Jenna was never kidnapped.
> 
> Thank you to Riley for the soundboarding and hand-holding and for making sure this all made sense, and to everyone on tumblr who read the parts of this I've shared and expressed excitement over it. I hope you all enjoy it! <3
> 
> Title from “Cassiopeia” by Sara Bareilles

Michael drops the wrench he's holding, hears it clatter against the bumper of the car he's working on, his hand automatically reaching up to touch the spot on his shoulder where his soulmark is. Through the bond he can feel an overwhelming rush of _love_ being directed at him by Alex. It persists as he bends over, causing a knot of worry to immediately form in his gut.

“What’sa matter, kid?”

Michael _hears_ Sanders asking, but he can’t focus on him. All he can think about is how the last time he felt anything, Alex had been halfway across the world, injured by a roadside bomb.

But why now? What was happening?

He digs his cell phone out of his pocket, cursing the grease and oil on his fingers as he punches in the PIN to unlock it, sending off a text to Alex.

“Nothing, just slipped,” Michael says, finally answering Sanders, and setting the wrench down on the engine. He hears Sanders grumble in response, and listens to the retreating steps back toward the office. Michael breathes a sigh of relief that at least he can try and figure out what the hell is going on without Sanders nagging him.

But no reply text comes. 

Next, he calls. Listens to the phone ring, and demands to no one but his phone speaker that Alex pick up.

It goes to voicemail.

He hopes there’s nothing to worry about, that Alex just has his phone on silent. He’s imagining the worst case scenario right now, and it’s sending him into a panic spiral of worry. 

He stares at the screen, and dials Maria’s number.

“Guerin, I’m a little busy at the-”

Michael doesn’t let her finish before interrupting. “Have you heard from Alex?”

The other end of the line is silent except for the background noise of the bar. Michael never has any idea what other things Maria plans in her quest to keep the Pony running smoothly, that hustle of hers something he admires more than he’ll often verbally admit to. His favorite though is the _Woman as Warrior_ class Isobel had complained about for weeks afterward.

“We haven't talked in a couple days,” she finally answers, surprising Michael because he’d expected her to yell at him about interrupting her at work. “But that’s normal, we don’t talk every-”

“I need you to try and call him.”

“Can’t you-”

"Maria," Michael pleads, cringing at just how desperate he sounds. "Just try please."

He ends the call, and wonders if he leaves right now how pissed Sanders will be. It takes him less than ten seconds to decide he doesn’t care, and heads toward his truck, pulling the driver side door open as his phone rings - Maria.

“Anything?”

“Straight to voicemail. What’s going on?”

Michael sighs, sliding into the driver’s seat, the cell phone wedged between his ear and shoulder. The push against the bond is gone, just a memory now.

“Can you meet me at his house?”

“Are you sure he just doesn’t want to be disturbed?”

“DeLuca, if he’s fine, I’ll pay my bar tab.”

“Holding you to that, Guerin.”

Michael ends the call, tossing his cell phone on the bench, and turns the ignition key.

A drive that usually takes closer to twenty minutes to the other side of town where Alex lives, Michael manages to make it in sixteen. He parks his truck in the driveway next to Alex’s SUV, and heads toward the front door. He hopes that Alex is fine, that this is just him panicking over nothing, but Michael can’t shake the feeling of Alex reaching out to him through their bond for a reason.

He knocks first, and waits a moment, still hoping that this is just him overreacting and Alex is just preoccupied with something. Michael is about to try the lock when he hears Maria’s truck approach, the gravel of the driveway crunching underneath the tires.

“I really hope you’re just being paranoid,” Maria says as she approaches, and Michael hopes he is too. If they walk in, and it’s just because Alex is working and has his phone on silent, that’s fine with Michael. 

But why had Alex reached out to him through their soulmate bond, if everything is just fine?

Things have been good between them for weeks. It even felt like at times, that they were starting to move back towards each other

Michael doesn’t like to think too hard about the nights he’s spent sitting around the fire pit at the junkyard, wishing to see Alex’s familiar SUV pull in, reminiscent of his leave visits back to Roswell. Even if he didn’t want the two of them to fall back into that patterns they’d gotten stuck in, and wanted more from a relationship with Alex.

Dating Maria had shown him that.

Cursing the existence of the soulmarks and its accompanying bond for somehow seeming to know something he doesn’t, Michael still finds himself holding onto a spark of hope that he and Alex will be okay one day.

He turns the knob, and is surprised to find the door unlocked, glancing back at Maria for a moment before taking a step inside. The house is dark and quiet as Michael carefully heads down the hall, glancing quickly into Alex’s office, where nothing appears to have been disturbed. Further down, the same appears true for the living room, dining area, and kitchen - in fact, the first thing Michael notices are Alex’s laptop and cell phone laying undisturbed on the table.

Turning around, he watches Maria push open the office door, peering inside. 

“I haven’t been in here very often, but nothing appears missing?”

Michael nods, joining her to glance into the office again. It’s meticulous as always, the desk with Alex’s high-tech computer setup, the entire system turned off. The wall furthest away from the door is a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling bookcase, full of texts. There’s a couch next to the window that overlooks the terrace, a blanket folded over the back of it.

He exits out of the room, and heads back down to the living room, falling into one of the chairs at the table, and picking up Alex’s cell phone. He knows the passcode, he’s known it for years. But he doesn’t unlock it, still hoping this entire thing is an overreaction on his part, and slides the phone back onto the table.

“You wanna tell me what made you freak out?” Maria asks, sliding into the seat next to him, and taking his hand. He lets her, doesn’t even think about how it’s the one he’d wrapped in a bandana weeks ago after Max had healed it. The truth about it isn’t a secret anymore to Maria, just like his own origins, though he still hates thinking about or talking about it more than absolutely necessary.

“I felt him,” he begins, before realizing Maria may not even know about him and Alex being soulmates. She’s seen the mark on the back of his shoulder, but had never asked about it, had never inquired if he knew who the other half belonged to. “I’ve only ever felt him one other time through our soulmate bond.”

She tilts her head a bit, brow furrowed in confusion for a moment, before recognition blooms across her face, her eyes going wide. It makes him realize, even for all the weeks they were together, he still wasn’t certain if she had a soulmate mark or not - at least, he hadn’t found one. 

“What was that like?”

It’s an innocent question, something curious, and further makes him believe that she may not have a mark of her own. 

“It’s not painful,” he lies easily. “It’s more emotions. I knew he was in pain, I knew he was hurt, but there was nothing I could do but wait and see if my mark faded away.”

Michael can still recall that night in 2016 with perfect clarity. How he’d gone to sleep after a typical day at the junkyard, and had woken up in the middle of the night gasping for air. He hadn’t understood what was happening at first, he’d mistaken it for a panic attack before realizing the fear he was feeling wasn’t his own, it was Alex’s. He’d laid awake in his bed, feeling the pain and agony Alex was in for hours before it disappeared again, the bond going quiet just as it had been since the first time Alex had touched him.

He’s checked the bond constantly, every free moment he had, finding a mirror to make sure the thick black lines were still there on the back of his shoulder. Hours passed, then days, and finally weeks, and there was no change, and that’s when he knew that at least Alex was still alive.

“Now your phone call makes a lot more sense.”

Michael nods, pulling his hand out from Maria’s grasp, and glancing around the living room. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but he’s shopping something will give him some sort of clue as to what happened to Alex.

It’s then that he gazes up at the indoor security camera hanging above the door that leads into Alex’s bedroom. It is pointed straight down the hallway to the front door, and Michael realizes Alex has security installed all over the house and on the property - surely something had to have been captured earlier.

He starts in Alex’s office, pushing open the doors, and glancing around again, this time with the idea in mind of actually looking for something that Alex may have left that would only be obvious to Michael. But the office yields nothing of the sort, just the floor to ceiling bookshelves, the soft under the windows, and Alex’s work set-up.

Maria is standing outside the door, waiting for him.

“Call Valenti,” Michael directs her, pushing past and heading back into the main room of the house, not waiting to see if Maria listens, but knowing she will.

In the living room, Michael does a sweep with his eyes, hovering over the music setup - the keyboard, the sound mixers, the record player, and allows himself to imagine for a moment what it must be like to watch Alex do this thing he loves in his free time, to make music again. He’s heard Alex play before, quiet tunes in the back of the pickup out in the middle of the New Mexico desert when it was just the two of them. Stolen moments away from the prying eyes of everyone, and Michael freezes.

The guitar.

He glances around, but the familiar soft case Alex had tried to give back to him months ago isn’t with the rest of the equipment, and Michael dashes back down the hallway to look in the office again.

No guitar.

Heading back to the main area of the house, Michael eyes the camera hanging above the door as he walks straight to the door, twisting the knob and walking inside.

Alex’s bedroom is the pinnacle of neat and organized, much like the rest of the house. The bed is perfectly made, the curtains pulled back and secured to let in the evening sunset. Michael hasn’t spent much time here since Alex brought the place, suring the short time they’d tried to be together again, most of their interactions happening at the Airstream.

But as he stands just inside the door, eyes scanning the room, Michael sees it. The fabric case is leaning against the dresser opposite the bed, the familiar worn out _I’m with the band_ sticker confirming to Michael that this is exactly what he’s looking for.

“Michael?” Maria calls from behind him, and he hears her footsteps approaching. “What’s going on?”

Glancing back at her, a smile on his face, he moves across the bedroom to get his hands on the guitar case, picking it up from it’s spot and setting it down on the bed, opening the zipper on the side to reveal the familiar guitar inside.

Letting out a deep breath, Michael runs a hand over the wood and lets his fingers gently pluck at the strings, finding it to still be in tune. Had Alex kept it in here all this time with the intention of one day trying once again to return it to him? Carefully, he wraps his fingers around the neck, lifting it out, and revealing a red folder beneath.

A quick flip through the folder reveals printed out documents, and upon closer inspection Michael recognizes the layout from other things he’s seen from the hard drives taken from Caulfield. Scribbled in some of the margins are notes in Alex’s handwriting, and Michael makes a mental note to look into those later. 

Maria sits down on the bed next to the case, her fingers dancing along the head, her eyes unfocused as if she’s thinking of something else.

“I’d wondered what happened to this,” she whispers, and Michael can tell she’s speaking more to herself than to him. “This was Gregory’s guitar.”

Is this all Alex left for him? A folder full of research from Caulfield and Project Shepherd on the soulmarks and the bond? But that didn’t make sense, why would Alex leave that for him? There had to be something else.

Michael runs his fingers along the lining of the case, hoping to feel for something, anything that might explain Alex’s reasoning.

In a pouch with two guitar picks, is a USB drive. Michael palms the drive, and turns to head back out into the main room, needing to know what’s on the drive. He realizes as he steps through the doorway that he’s left the folder, and turns to retrieve it before seeing Maria following him, folder in hand, and her eyebrows raised at him.

They sit back down at the table, and this time Michael turns on Alex’s laptop, waiting for it to boot up. It prompts for a password, and Michael curses low under his breath for a moment, thinking about what Alex could possibly use. He’s really not in the mood to test his own computer skills and see if he can outsmart Alex.

After a moment, Michael types in the date of the first time Alex came back to Roswell after he enlisted, the first time they’d seen each other since that summer. He’s not even sure it’s a good memory, but clearly it holds a bit of sentimental value to Alex, because the screen fades to the desktop, and Michael immediately plugs in the USB drive.

“I’m not surprised you’d be able to guess his password,” Maria says next to him, and for a moment Michael wonders if it’s something akin to jealousy he hears, but shakes it off, chalking it up to his own residual insecurity surrounding their break up and nothing else.

There are more files on the USB drive, and Michael scans through them, seeing what’s there until a video catches his eye. He clicks open the file and waits for it to load.

_“Hi Michael.”_

It’s Alex. And even though it’s a video, Michael feels himself breathe just a little easier seeing that Alex appears to have known he’d stumbled across something he shouldn’t have, leaving breadcrumbs just in case.

_“When looking into the Caulfield drives for information about your mother, I stumbled upon research material relating to the soulmarks. There isn’t a lot, but Project Shepherd and Caulfield seem to have taken an interest after the crash in studying the marks and the soulmate bond.”_

As Alex speaks, the front door opens, and Michael immediately pauses the video, leaning back in his chair to see Kyle rushing down the hallway toward them.

“Guerin! Maria! What the hell is going on?”

He lets Kyle take in the laptop, and the video on the screen of Alex before speaking.

“What the hell is that? Where’s Alex?”

Michael motions to the chair next to him. “He’s missing. He left a folder and this USB drive for me to find.”

“How do you know he’s missing?”

Though it’s a perfectly rational question to ask, Michael doesn’t like that Kyle sounds like he’s questioning the validity of what Michael is saying. 

“He reached out to me, through our soulmate bond, and by the time I got here, he was gone.” Michael points to the laptop and phone. “All his stuff is still here, his car is still in the driveway - think about it, Valenti.”

Kyle tilts his head. “And you think his father took him?”

“I’m not ruling out the possibility.”

“The bastard did try to kill me.”

Happy to have brought Kyle caught up to speed, Michael turns back in his seat and restarts the video.

_“I went to my father, to see if I could play into his weaknesses again, get him to try and tell me more about whatever Project Shepherd was doing. Maybe I said the wrong thing, asked the wrong question, and it tipped him off to something. Start with him, and be careful.”_

The video ends and Michael stares at the screen for a moment, feeling like he needs to process what Alex has just said, and can’t do it with Kyle and Maria flanking him on both side. Quickly, he stands up, pushing his chair back with his legs, and fleeing in the direction of Alex’s bedroom using his telekinesis to slam the door shut behind him. 

Standing in front of the mirror in Alex’s bathroom, Michael pulls his shirt over his head, and turns his back toward the mirror, so he has a view of the mark on his shoulder. It’s still there of course, the lines just as dark and visible as the day he found it nearly eleven years ago. It’s stubborn continued presence is the only thing grounding him at the moment, reassuring him that Alex is alive.

He doesn’t know if it’ll work, but Michael reaches up, letting his fingers trace along the mark with perhaps a bit more force than is strictly necessary, but he and Alex have never had a solid connection through the soulmate bond, his knowledge of how it works is sketchy and relies solely on secondhand information. But as he presses his fingertips into the black lines on his skin, he thinks of everything from the love he feels for Alex, to the anger he’d felt each time Alex had left and walked away. He wishes there were more happy memories and moments to focus on, and the longing he feels at wishing they could feel each other through the soulbond the way it’s been described to him by others. He doesn’t know if anything more is happening except yelling in his own head but Michael figures it can’t hurt to try.

Taking a deep breath to calm himself Michael drops his hand from his back, and retrieves his t-shirt from where he’d thrown it on the floor, pulling it back on over his head, and stalking out of the bathroom.

When he opens the bedroom door, he immediately notices Kyle is already gone, but Maria is still sitting at the table, standing up as soon as she sees him. He lets her take his face in her hands, remaining still as she presses a kiss to his cheek, before stepping back to look him in the eye.

“We’ll get him back.”

“Maria, I-”

He’s at a loss for words. Doesn’t know how to fully describe how important Alex is to him, and why he’d reacted with anger. 

“I know,” she replies, smiling at him, and reaching out to give his hand a squeeze. “I know.”

He watches as she spins around, heading toward the front door, leaving him alone in Alex’s house. The computer is still open on the table, and Michael glares at it for a moment before sitting back down to restart the video.

**\--------**

(June 2008)

_There it is._

_Alex had no idea what it was supposed to actually be, the two lines not looking like anything except some abstract doodling. He was quietly thankful for the mark showing up on his upper back, near his right shoulder - easily covered by a shirt. He could hide it, not have to worry about questioning gazes, or about the invasive questions those with more visible marks sometimes got asked. Between the moment he'd realized he was gay, and understanding how different having a mark made someone, Alex had hoped he'd never get one. His sexuality already put a target on him in regards to his father and the Manes legacy, he didn't need something else to add to the mix._

_He pulled his black UFO Emporium t-shirt over his head, and glanced at the clock on his bedside table - it was almost midnight. His father was no doubt asleep by now, and Alex needed to talk to Maria. Another glance in the mirror, and Alex tried to not focus on the bruises marring the pale skin of his neck. He didn't want to regret today, he didn't want to forget the good parts, wishing he could focus on a different set of hands that had touched him, ones that belonged to a boy who had looked at Alex like he was special and loved. A boy with curly brown hair that Alex had obsessively ran his fingers through, laughing when his rings had gotten caught in the strands._

_Nothing in his life had ever felt as right as Michael Guerin kissing him._

_Sneaking out was the easy part, Alex had been doing it for years, always to go visit Maria or Liz. But tonight felt different, even as he tried to ignore the feeling in the pit of his stomach, the sound of screams and a hammer hitting flesh and bone. He tried not to think of the shed, of what had happened there just hours earlier, and grabbed his bike from where it was leaning up against the side of the house._

_Without hesitation, he knocks on the side door to the DeLuca's house, and waits. Falls down onto the stoop, and buries his head in his arms. He hears footsteps inside, and turns around as the door opens up, revealing Maria. Her hair is down, her curls wild and beautiful, and Alex tries to smile like nothing is wrong, but Maria sees through it, and falls down onto the step next to him, pressing comfortably into his side._

_"Mama said it was you. You okay?"_

_Alex takes a deep breath, and tries again._

_"Dad's on the warpath again. But I needed to talk to you."_

_"Did something happen?"_

_"Remember the cute guy I told you about?"_

_"Guitar Stealer?"_

_"Maria," Alex whines, bumping shoulders, laughing at the dumb nickname. He watches her put her hands up in mock defeat, a signal for him to proceed. "He kissed me today."_

_"You couldn't lead with that?"_

_He glances over at her, her gaze is fixed on him, watching him, reading him. It doesn't bother him, the way she picks up on him sometimes, emotions and feelings. She never pries if he doesn't feel like talking, and really, there's no person he trusts more in the world than her._

_If platonic soul mates were a thing, he's positive that's what he and Maria would be._

_But this, this feels different. He knows what he feels for Michael Guerin, but saying it out loud, admitting those feelings and putting a name to them feels like a mountain too high to climb right now._

_Maria will understand. He knows she will._

_"I need to-" Alex pauses, glancing back towards the house, and then at Maria. She's waiting for him, and raises her eyebrows at his stuttering, always patient. "Can we go inside?"_

_She nods, moving to stand, and Alex watches her turn, holding a hand out to pull him up. He expects her to let go, but instead she keeps her grip on him, and leads him inside, letting the door slam shut behind him. Mimi is sitting in the living room on the sofa, a book on her lap. Alex envies the quiet comfort of the DeLuca home, where everything feels warm and cozy, nothing like the rigid functional of his own. Here, Alex can curl up on the couch under a blanket and feel safe._

_"Sorry for stopping by so late, Mimi-"_

_She doesn't let him finish, shaking her head, and smiling at him._

_"You're always welcome here, Alex."_

_There have been days he's cried over the way Mimi and Maria have always welcomed him into their home, creating a sanctuary away from his brothers and especially from his father. Somewhere he can go when he needed to remember that living under Jesse Manes' roof was temporary, that he'll turn eighteen and be able to go wherever he wants, and do whatever he wants._

_Maria leads him down the hallway and into her bedroom, with its pale blue walls filled with thumb tacked trinkets, and Alex closes the door behind them. He knows it's weird - Maria rarely closes her bedroom door, and Alex wonders what it's like to have a parent that still respects their child's need for privacy._

_"What's wrong?" Maria asks, watching him, and Alex can only meet her eyes for a moment before he's pulling his hoodie over his head, bringing the t-shirt underneath with it, and turning so his back is to Maria, so she can see the mark._

_"It showed up today."_

_He doesn't turn back around, but feels her fingers run over the skin near the mark, taking care to not touch it._

_"Your mysterious museum kisser?"_

_He nods, pulling his shirt and hoodie back over his head, leaving the hood up covering him like a protective layer, and turning back to Maria, who's sitting on the edge of the bed now. Alex crawls onto her bed, putting his back against the wall and pulling his knees towards himself, curling up into himself a bit._

_Thinking about the way Michael had shown up at the UFO Emporium that afternoon, all nervous energy, tapping his fingers along the counter, and asking to go somewhere private. Alex had been sure he'd come to let him down about the almost kiss in the shed the other day, had prepared to be given some version of a "no homo" speech, because this was Roswell. While the odds of there being other gay kids in town were pretty good, the likelihood that this beautiful boy with curly brown hair who had been the first person to step in between him and Kyle Valenti was also gay was slim to none. And Alex would have preferred to just be left alone then, to imagine his what ifs, and how after graduation he could leave, join Liz on her road trip and never look back._

_He hadn't expected Michael Guerin to take a deep breath and practically lunge at him, to take Alex's face in between his hands and kiss him. And he hadn't expected it to feel like the world was slotting into place, like a piece of him that had been missing had finally been found again._

_He hadn’t expected to find someone in Roswell who made the town feel like home for the first time._

_It was known that the soulmate mark initiated a bond between two people, that they'd be able to share emotions, feelings, and sometimes even communicate telepathically. But Alex wasn't sure if he'd felt any of that, or if he had but it had been overshadowed by the events that happened after. He couldn't tell, in those moments, if it was his fear or Michael's, his own pain from the beating his father had delivered or if it was Michael's from his hand._

_It'd been hours, and still nothing that could definitely give him an answer. Maybe that meant they weren't soulmates after all. Or maybe they weren't meant to have some deep bond where they could share emotions. Maybe all they'd end up with was some black lines on their skin and nothing more._

_“What happened? You don’t feel happy.” She pauses, reassesses, and glares at him. “Well, you do. But there’s something else.”_

_He smiles at her, but knows it doesn’t reach his eyes._

_"I think my father is going to make me join the Air Force."_

_“No road trip?”_

_Alex hates the concern in Maria's voice, how aware she is of his post-graduation plans. He can't tell her about what happened in the shed, and the way it made him feel. The decision he’s made as a result of it. He doesn't want her to know just how bad it is, living with Jesse Manes. He knows she has an idea, bruises that can't be explained away by skateboarding._

_He loves her for the questions she doesn't ask._

_"Would you hate me if I joined?"_

_He lets Maria lean into him, wrapping her arms around him, knocking their heads together gently. Lets her touch ground him, and tries to forget how much the perfect afternoon melted into a nightmare evening. He's seen enough movies, TV, and read enough books - wonders if there is an alternate reality out there, somewhere he and Michael Guerin get to be happy. Where the mark on his back doesn't feel like something he has to hide just to survive._

**\--------**

Michael spends the night at Alex’s house.

He sleeps in one of Alex’s Air Force hoodies, but can’t bring himself to sleep in Alex’s bed, making do with blankets on the couch in the living room instead. It’s the smallest of comforts, to wrap himself up in things that smell of Alex. In between moments of restless sleep, Michael figures out how to access the video footage from the cameras Alex has located all over the house and on the property. 

His own security system had tipped him off, Michael notes as he watches the footage, and notices the calm way Alex moves around the house in the moments before the front door is opened. But it’s there, in the seconds before, that Alex stands in full view of the indoor camera, and reaches up, placing his hand on the back of his shoulder, and Michael’s own immediately flies up to his soulmark.

That’s the moment he felt Alex.

It feels surreal to watch it now, Alex never taking his eyes off the camera, and Michael recalls the _love_ that he’d felt pass through the bond. 

The intruders are unidentifiable, black clothing, masks, the works, and the license plate of the black SUV they throw Alex into has it’s license plates covered.

But whoever had taken Alex had known about his injury, Michael notes as he watches them kick out Alex’s good leg from underneath him, Alex falling straight down to his knees. Michael knows, has complete confidence that Alex could have taken out the intruders, but he wonders why he didn’t.

In the morning, Maria stops by, letting herself in, and dropping a grocery bag on the counter in the kitchen.

“Did you sleep at all? You look terrible.”

He feels terrible. 

“I stayed up looking at those files and watching-”

“You’re no good to Alex if you’re dead from sleep deprivation”

Michael rolls his eyes, leaning up against the counter as he watches her set to work, unpacking groceries, and moving around the kitchen with the ease of someone who’s been here many times before. She grabs a cutting board from one cabinet, a knife from a drawer, and begins chopping up onions and peppers from her bag. 

“I don’t know what else to do,” he admits, wondering if he looks as desperate as he feels at the moment. To distract himself, Michael walks into the kitchen, and gets to work setting up the coffee maker, because at the least there should be coffee. “How are you so calm right now?”

The moment the words leave his mouth, Michael realizes he’s said the wrong thing, but it’s too late to take the words back. He turns around to see Maria glaring at him, the knife in her hands pointed in his direction.

“I am not _calm_. My mother regularly wanders out of the care facility she lives at, and I get to entertain a phone call asking if I know where she is.” He watches her pull the knife back, taking a deep breath and turning back around. “I’m just much better at compartmentalizing than you are. Alex is just as important to me as he is to you.”

Michael doesn’t doubt that at all.

Even now he struggles with how his decision to kiss Maria had apparently caused tension between the two of them for weeks afterwards. He hadn’t known it would be a big deal - he and Alex weren’t together. Alex hadn’t wanted to be with him, so what did it matter if he kissed Maria?

Now, he’s just glad that the two of them have seemed to have worked past any awkwardness he’d caused, because he cares about both of them deeply, even if he and Alex can’t get their shit together, and he and Maria have tried to work and found they couldn’t.

He watches Maria work in silence, heating up a pan on the stove, and frying up two omelettes for them to eat.

“You should turn in Alex’s security camera footage to the sheriff,” Maria says in between bites as they sit at the kitchen table. “Evidence and all that for when you find him.”

Michael notices she believes that he’s going to find Alex, not that the sheriff’s department will. 

“And you should call Gregory. If Alex has one decent brother who might be able to help, it’s Gregory.”

He’ll take Maria’s word on that, because Michael has almost no familiarity with the rest of the Manes family outside of Jesse Manes’ hunt for aliens. According to Alex, his older brother Flint had been stationed at Caulfield when they’d been there, transferred out of his posting in Germany several years earlier. Alex had sounded worried at finding out that Flint had been involved in the development of weapons against the aliens, as if they were anticipating some sort of invasion in the future.

Maria grabs her purse, and pulls out a postcard, sliding it across the table to him. It’s a generic _Welcome to Roswell_ postcard found at nearly every shop that sold UFO related souvenirs. When he flips it over, there is a location, time, and two words: **come alone**.

“It was taped to the door of the Airstream.”

“Do you recognize the handwriting?” He asks her, not being able to place it himself.

She shakes her head, though he hadn’t been expecting her to know.

“If you’re going to do something stupid, please let Max know ahead of time.”

Michael rolls his eyes, even though he knows she’s right, he should call Max, he’s also pretty sure Max would try and tell him what a dumb idea going after Alex alone is, and talk him out of it. Not that Michael would listen, not when this is Alex they’re talking about. Not when Max had unilaterally made the decision to expose their origins to Liz Ortecho all those months ago.

Because while Max had refused to live in a world without Liz Ortecho, Michael already knew he couldn’t survive a world where Alex Manes didn’t exist.

“Just a suggestion, Guerin.”

Michael sighs. He knows Maria is only trying to help, and he is grateful for her presence at the moment, because had he been left to his own devices, Michael isn’t even sure he’d be eating, he’d be so focused on just finding Alex, throwing himself head first into the research Alex had left.

“Maria,” he says, waiting until she meets his gaze. “Thank you.”

He offers to clean up, picking up the plates, and taking everything to the sink to wash. Maria had done a great job of cleaning as she’d worked leaving no traces of food scraps on the counter, so Michael just has to wash the plates, forks and the pan. It’s as he’s drying everything off to put back in their proper places, that Michael notes Maria is flipping through the folder with Alex’s research, occasionally glancing up to stare at the screen of Alex’s laptop.

“The night his mark appeared, he showed up at my house,” Maria begins, her eyes focused on the screen, on the video of Alex, and Michael slips into the nearest chair to listen. “And I could sense this happiness radiating off him, but it was overshadowed by something else - fear, and sadness, and maybe a tinge of loneliness. Of course I didn’t have all the facts at the time, he never told me what happened that night before he’d shown up, but I knew bits and pieces about what went on in that house. And it wasn’t until recently that I finally got the whole story, or finally learned that you were the guy who kissed him in the museum senior year.”

When Maria finally glances away from the screen, she looks over at him, and there’s a small smile on her face, the reason for Michael can’t quite place.

“It doesn’t matter now how angry I was at him after Texas, for never telling me any of that, never telling me it was you. But it had felt like he couldn’t trust me,” Maria hesitates, the smile dropping from her face, and nervous fingers pulling at the necklace around her neck. “And I know that’s not it, that he and I are both responsible for things being awkward between us. It was so hard to avoid him because how do you avoid one of the most important people in your life? A decade of us making it work while he was stationed all over the planet - we always kept in contact. So he knew something was wrong, and he gave me space to come to him instead.”

Finally, she looks at him.

“So constantly seeing that mark on your back, knowing he was the one with the other half - I could never stop thinking about that, wondering if I was keeping him from being happy. Of course, he insisted I wasn’t, that I deserved to be happy too, and I tried to believe it. But I want-” She pauses for a moment, biting her lip. “He is my best friend, and I want him to be happy. And isn’t that what those stupid marks are for? To lead you to that person?”

Hearing the frustration in her voice, Michael reaches out and takes her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. Maybe in another life, a different life, they would have worked out. 

“But what about you?”

Maria scoffs. "Guerin, I'll be fine. Just because you and I aren't together doesn't mean I'm going to sit around wallowing." She pauses, a smile spreading across her face. "And clearly you are not the great love of my life."

"I don't feel like anyone's _great love_ , DeLuca."

She slides the folder of information toward him.

“Why don’t you get out of here for a bit? Take this to Liz, let her look it over. And talk to Max about that postcard. I’ll call Sheriff Valenti about the cameras.”

Michael nods, pushing back from the table, and standing up. Maybe Maria is right, and getting out of Alex’s house will do him good - he’s been here almost 24 hours now, waiting and obsessing and hoping. He grabs his hat from where he’d dropped it on the table the day before, picks up the folder, and heads toward the front door.

**\--------**

Michael waves the folder in the air as a hello as he closes the door to Max's house behind him. Liz is perched on top of the counter, her feet balanced on one of the stools, scribbling away in a notebook, and Max is sitting on the couch, a book open in front of him. Michael’s belatedly realizes he should probably have _knocked_ first, but now that’s he here-

“Michael! What brings you by?”

It’s weird to think a year ago, how against Liz Ortecho knowing anything about their origins Michael had been. These days, he can’t imagine not having her as a partner to work with in parsing out the questions relating to their alien biology. 

“What do you know about the soulmarks?”

Liz frowns, clearly confused by his question, and he watches as she immediately glances over at Max.

“Not much, I guess. Why do you ask?”

He holds up the folder again, crossing the room and handing it off to her. He gives her a moment to peruse it, dropping his hat on the table, and watching as her eyes widen in recognition of what she’s reading.

“Is this from the Caulfield drives?”

Michael nods, running a hand through his hair. “And Project Shepherd.”

“Were you looking for anything specific in relation to them? There’s a lot of information here.”

He shakes his head, leaning on the armrest. “Alex left it for me, so I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be looking for.”

Liz’s head jerks up, glancing first at him, then at Max.

“Where’s Alex?” Max asks, and Michael can hear the suspicion in his voice. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to tell you?”

“I would, but he’s missing. Someone took him.”

Liz immediately snaps the folder shut, and pushes off the counter, dropping it on the coffee table in front of Max, who stares at it for a moment before reaching out to pick it up. “Way to bury the lede, Mikey.”

He lets out a sigh. Yes, getting out of Alex’s house and coming here was a fantastic idea.

“And you’re sure?”

Michael doesn’t tell Max what he wants to say in response, which is that if Liz was missing, would that really be the first thing Max would want him asking. 

“I’m sure.”

Max presses on, clearly not taking the answer Michael is offering. “But how do you know-”

“Alex has a pretty sophisticated security system,” Liz says from the kitchen, where she’s pouring whiskey into three coffee mugs, and Michael is eternally grateful for her. “Cameras, an alarm system - I think he’s also got a motion sensor in the driveway.”

“You should give the camera footage to Sheriff Valenti” Max adds unhelpfully, as if Michael hadn’t already thought of that.

“Already on it.”

He watches Liz juggle the three mugs in her hands, walking across to the couch, and carefully sliding the three onto the table, before falling onto the couch next to Max, Michael gets up, sitting in one of the armchairs, and grabbing one of the mugs for himself.

“So do you know why Alex was looking into the marks?”

Michael shakes his head. “Just that he came across it while looking for information on my mother.”

Liz takes the folder from Max, who lets out a grunt in protest, but doesn’t try to take it back from her. She flips through the papers, brow furrowed in concentration before glancing up at him.

“Alex has a soulmark.”

Michael looks at her and tries to not react outwardly to her statement. “He does.”

“You never said you have a soulmark, Michael.”

There it is. But it was never that Michael had intentionally kept it from Max, and by extension, Isobel. It was just not something that ever really came up that he felt he needed to share with them. Max had talked about his own so often, it felt like there was no reason for Michael to even share that he also had one. Especially when Max was talking about being able to feel Liz through their soulbond connection, and Michael had almost no understanding of what that felt like.

“Max,” Liz warns.

“I’m just curious!” 

But he lets it drop, and Michael is grateful. What would he even say in a conversation about the marks and the bond and soulmates? His knowledge extends to two black lines on the back of his shoulder and two isolated incidents where Alex had been able to reach through to him when he’d been in danger.

“Is it possible his research triggered something - someone noticed?”

Michael nods, internally debating about mentioning who the only suspect at the moment is.

He doesn’t wait to see what Liz and Max’s reactions to that bit of news is, and pulls the postcard out of his jacket pocket, dropping it on the table.

He watches Liz snatch it up off the table first, flipping it around and staring at the handwriting, leaning over and showing it to Max.

"Is this a ransom note?"

"It was taped to the door of the Airstream this morning."

"Don't do anything stupid, Michael," Max warns, and Michael glares at him. "You don't even know what they want! It could be to lock you in a cell, for all we know."

Michael pushes himself up out of the chair, grabbing his hat off the table and walking towards the door.

"Last year, when Liz almost died, you decided to save her. You didn't think about me, or Isobel, or exposing us - you just did it. And I get it," he drops his voice from where it'd been loud and annoyed to a normal volume. He watches Liz reach out to Max, putting a hand on his shoulder, and Michael shakes his head. He's not angry over Max saving Liz, hasn't been for months now. "I get it. And I know if Liz was missing, if this was about getting her back, you'd be there."

He doesn't want to use Liz as a weapon against Max, but he needs Max to understand there is no question about what Michael will do to get Alex back, and to make sure he's okay. 

"You can't go alone." Max's voice cuts through the silence before Michael's hand reaches the doorknob.

**\--------**

He tries for several useless hours to do his job at the junkyard, thinking the distraction will work, keeping him from obsessing over Alex being missing. It feels like he's headed into a trap, because he knows someone like Jesse Manes is not going to take Alex, and then just give him up again. There had to be a reason he felt he needed to take Alex in the first place, and that's what Michael needs to figure out.

Alex had said he'd started researching the soulmarks when he'd come across the information, and had even gone to his father to try and find out more. Michael knows it worked in the past, but that may have been because it was exactly what Jesse Manes wanted. He recalled Alex mentioning Flint leaving an after action report for him to find, but according to Alex his brother had been at Caulfield, transferred from a posting in Germany several years ago, and was now involved in weapons development for Project Shepherd.

Michael refused to believe even the after action report had been left under the best circumstances, thankful only for the information it had been able to provide in assisting in the search for his mother.

At the lab at the old Indian boarding school, Michael boots up one of the computers, and pulls up all the information Alex had indexed for them as he'd gone through and decrypted the Caulfield drives. He immediately sets up a query for the soulmarks, and lets it run.

It's no surprise how many results are returned, and he begins scanning the results to see if there's anything that could help him understand the reasoning behind taking Alex. There isn't much, mainly because the soulmarks were a still somewhat rare phenomenon, and as far as Michael knew, no one had successfully been able to track down their origins. That of course, would make anyone point to them being alien.

And of course, buried in the middle of a paragraph, is mention of ways the military and the government has set about tracking individuals with soulmarks - notations on medical charts and reporting to an agency that sounds like it's sole purpose must be for gathering intel on people with marks, and how the marks and the soul bond connection functioned. There's also a section about the prisoners in Caulfield, how the majority of them upon intake, were found to have a soulmark somewhere on their body.

Alex would never have told his father about his soulmark.

Fumbling out his cell phone, Michael dials Maria's number and waits for her to pick up. He has one thing he needs her to answer before he shows up at the location tonight.

“Guerin, you weren’t this needy when we-”

He doesn't let her finish.

"When Alex first joined the Air Force, back when Don't Ask Don't Tell was in place, how did he explain his soulmark?"

Maria's quiet for a moment, and Michael hears the noise in the background disappear as she moves somewhere more private, he guesses.

"Why?"

"Think about it Maria, how did his father even find out about it? I can't imagine Alex was one to share that detail with him."

He imagines the pieces clicking into place for her, as she remains silent on the other end of the phone.

"If he needed to, he told people I was his soulmate."

Michael had expected that answer.

"You're at the Pony, right?"

"It's seven o'clock on a Saturday, where else would I be?"

Michael smiles at her sarcasm toward him. It's one thing he loves about her. But if she's at the Pony, surrounded by people, it's less likely anyone would try anything. At this point, he's fairly certain the only person about to be put in harm's way is himself, but Michael doesn't want to take any chances. He needs Maria safe.

He dials Isobel's number.

"Don't you have somewhere you need to be?"

He laughs, enjoying that she skips right past the formalities.

"Max should be here soon, but can you go to the Pony and keep and eye on Maria for me?"

"Is someone after her now too?"

"No," he replies automatically, then pauses to reconsider. "I don't know. I'd just feel better while I'm-"

Isobel sighs, sounding annoyed. "Fine. I will rearrange my night, forgoing potentially getting laid by a hot blonde I meet at Planet 7, in order to play guard duty to your ex-girlfriend."

"Thanks, Iz."

The security door into the lab beeps, and opens, revealing Max looking ready for some sort of top secret stakeout in jeans and a black sweater. Michael stares at him for a moment, confused by the outfit.

"Nancy Drew's clearly got nothing on you."

**\--------**

Michael is so done with abandoned places, including the warehouse in front of him. Nothing good ever comes from places like this, and he's sure the same is going to hold true now.

He parks his truck out front, and makes a mental note of Max's location a half mile down the road before using his telekinesis to push his way inside.

The warehouse is cold and empty, as if no one has stepped foot inside in years. He walks past an office, the glass barrier shattered and in pieces on the ground, graffiti coloring the walls in hues of yellow, red, and orange. Through a heavy metal door, Michael walks into the main storage area. In several places the roof is collapsed in, windows along the exterior walls are smashed and cracked, and the cement floor is crumbling in places from so much exposure to the elements.

If Michael was human, he'd worry about the place collapsing on top of him.

But he seems to be the only living soul in the building, and that's the biggest disappointment. It wasn't as though he'd expected someone to be standing here waiting for him, ready to just hand Alex back over. That would make this all incredibly easy, and Michael knows it's not going to be that simple.

"What are you waiting for?" He yells out, listening as his voice echoes off the walls. 

He laments the lack of anywhere to sit while he waits, no chairs or boxes, not even any left over shelving he can perch on in the meantime.

Why this abandoned warehouse anyway? Was it because of its much more remote location within an industrial park? Or that it's located more than an hour outside Roswell? No matter how Michael tries to think of it, this place is nothing more than a random drop of a pin on a map.

After popping the glass out of nearly a dozen windows, trying to remain entertained as he waits for… whoever, Michael scoffs and heads back towards the door he'd entered the building in. 

It looks like he's going to have to take a much more direct approach in getting Alex back.

But as he's passing the office again, Michael pauses, his gaze landing on a security camera in one of the upper corners. He stares at for a moment, wondering if it's functional, reaching out with his telekinesis and yanking at wires that will turn off the feed.

Just as he's about to push open the door to the outside, he feels a pressure on his soulmark. It just feels the way any part of your body feels when someone presses too hard into your skin, before it morphs into something worse. The pressure is replaced almost immediately by the feeling of his mark being on fire, searing the two lines into his skin like a brand.

Michael stumbles through the door, fumbling for his cell phone.

Unable to focus, he trips on some loose concrete, watching as his phone falls, sliding away from him. 

And then he feels the pressure through the soulmate bond, through his connection with Alex. Michael can't think of anything except fire, and pain, and agony as he tries to reach up and touch his soulmark. 

What the hell was happening? 

Was someone torturing Alex?

Is someone screaming?

His fingers connect with the lines of his soulmark, and Michael passes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, and I'll have Part Two up later this week!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the next part, as promised! 
> 
> Please heed the additional tags I've added for this chapter due some canon-typical violence.
> 
> Enjoy!

He comes awake slowly, first recognizing that he is _definitely_ not in the Airstream by the feel of the bedsheets, and then opening his eyes to the boring taupe colored walls of Max's guest bedroom. But at least the bed is comfy, and Michael closes his eyes for a moment before remembering.

_Alex._

His eyes fly open in a panic.

"Max!" Michael calls out, pushing up on his elbows in a pitiful attempt to sit up. He fails, falling back into the pillows, and waits. He tries not to panic over the sunlight pouring in through the windows, because when he’d been at the warehouse, it’s been evening and the sun had been starting to set on the horizon.

Instead of Max answering his call, it’s Isobel that strolls through the bedroom door, tapping away on her cell phone before looking up and glaring at him. Valenti is right on her heels, looking equally as annoyed.

“I don’t know what happened, but you scared the shit out of all of us.”

“Did I pass out?”

Isobel rolls her eyes. “Yes, Michael, you did. And then you didn’t wake up for 12 hours.”

“Your vitals were normal, so we knew you were okay,” Kyle quickly adds, leaning against the door frame. “But there is something.”

Michael tilts his head, looking at Kyle, and then glancing at Isobel, who shrugs her shoulders.

“Something like what?”

He watches Kyle push off the wall, and walk toward him, thumbing at his cell phone for a moment before holding it out for Michael to look at. It’s a picture of his own back, and his soulmark specifically. But the color is off - instead of the solid black it normally is, the soulmark is now dark burgundy.

“When Max called, I hadn’t even thought it could be related to your soulmark.” Kyle pauses, shaking his head. “It was Isobel’s idea to look after Max mentioned he found you holding onto your shoulder.”

Michael hands Kyle back his phone. "What does a burgundy colored mark mean?"

Kyle grimaces, and Michael realizes _he doesn't know_.

"Liz is at the lab searching the Caulfield drives now, and I'm heading over to the Project Shepherd bunker to look there. But given how rare these soulmarks already are, I'd be surprised if we find anything."

Michael nods, understanding. The soulmarks are quite rare, he knows, though there's some information to be found regarding them, they largely remain a mystery. No one really knows though, what the origin of them is, one day they just began being referenced in writing about a union, and from there the relevance grew as if they'd existed all along.

"So what happened?" Isobel drops onto the bed near his feet, and flips her cell phone down in her hand.

"I was there, looking around, but it was empty, like I was being set up. Made to think they'd bring Alex there and end all this," he begins, unable to stop himself from reaching back and letting his fingers graze over his mark through his shirt. "Was finally about to leave, I noticed security cameras set up in places. They didn't look new, so I disabled one. And that's when I got this pressure on my mark. It was fine at first, but then it got worse, and felt like my shoulder was on fire."

"Sounds like you pissed someone off real bad," Isobel notes with her usual tone of sarcasm, and Michael grabs one of the extra pillows on the bed to throw at her. "Hey!" 

"Thank you for your concern."

"I just mean, that doesn't sound like a normal thing that happens. And besides, I thought the marks didn't react to other people touching it?"

Kyle snaps his fingers, pointing at Isobel. "Exactly!"

Michael glares at the two of them, and moves to push himself to sit up.

"What are you doing?"

He rolls his eyes at Kyle's question, and shoves the hand away that Kyle tries to put on his arm to steady him.

"That means that pain came from Alex," Michael snaps, frustrated.

"Not necessarily." Kyle replies, and Michael moves to grab the remaining extra pillow to hit him with. "Hold on! If Alex was injured, you'd have been familiar with the color change. But that's not what happened last time, is it?" 

Michael shakes his head, because no, the mark had remained solid black through that entire ordeal. He'd checked the mark so many times each day until he'd finally heard word around town that Alex was alive and recovering in a hospital in Germany, it put a dent in his productivity at the junkyard. 

"So then what the hell is going on?"

He has no idea, but today feels like a good day to go give Jesse Manes a visit.

**\--------**

His first stop though, is the Wild Pony to see Maria. It's the late afternoon, the bar isn't too busy, and Michael knows he'll get the chance to actually speak with her. But as he approaches the bar, he notices a familiar blonde sitting in one of the stools, and slides into the one next to her.

"Deputy Cameron," he greets her, dropping his hat on the bartop.

"Guerin."

"Didn't take you for 'drink in the middle of the afternoon' kinda gal."

He watches her nod her head a bit, picking up the glass at her fingertips, and taking a sip. "Typically, I'm not."

That is not the answer he was expecting. He lets it drop, though now he's curious as to her answer. Just as he's formulating a way to talk afternoon boozing, Maria appears in the doorway leading to the storeroom. She immediately notices him sitting at the bar, and walks straight in his direction, staring daggers at him the entire time.

"Next time you decide that _I_ need protection, because this town can't just be _normal_ , try and send someone who isn't Isobel Evans." Her tone is clipped, and he watches as she puts her hands on the bar, but never stops glaring at him. "Tequila or whiskey?"

He blinks at her. "Whiskey."

She pours his drink with a nod, and he watches her smile at Jenna.

"Isobel showed up, bitching about ruined Saturday night plans, so I called Jenna instead." Maria's voice goes a bit softer as she speaks of Jenna, and Michael feels like he's gonna need a couple more drinks before he begins to even consider the possibility of his ex dating Max's ex. "So if you're here, you didn't find him, so what the fuck happened, Guerin?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" He can hear the aggravation in her voice, and can't blame her for it. He's feeling the same, but more at himself for believing it could actually be that easy. "So what now?"

Jenna puts her glass down, and leans in just a fraction. "Do you think Jesse Manes took him?"

Michael watches Maria narrow her eyes.

"I know that house wasn't - for Alex - but kidnapping?"

"That man is not above blackmailing people into doing things he wants. He held my sister over me for months."

Michael hadn't heard about that before, but now he was a little curious what Jesse Manes could want with Jenna and her sister. Weren't they new in town?

"But kidnapping?" Maria asks again in disbelief, before reaching into her back pocket and pulling out her cell phone, immediately unlocking it and tapping away on the screen.

"Who are you calling?"

"I'm texting Gregory."

Jenna looks between Maria and Michael, obviously confused. Maria finishes her text, and slides the phone onto the bartop.

"Greg is Alex's brother, probably the only one who isn't a total dick. He lives about two hours northwest of here, on the reservation where their mother is from."

Michael knows Gregory, remembers him mostly from high school, but doesn't really know much about him, so he trusts Maria's decision, and will deal with the consequences later. Right now, he really just wants to find Alex and make sure he's okay.

"I'm gonna believe choose to believe that you know what you're doing, DeLuca."

She leans over the bartop, putting her weight on her arms, her face inches away from him, smiling.

"Trust me, Guerin."

 _Fuck_. He'd never trade for a world without Alex, but sometimes he wonders what it'd be like to be able to be with her, for her to be the one he was in love with. She pulls back from him, slapping the top of the bar with a laugh, and walks further down the bar to help another customer.

Immediately, Jenna turns to him, smacking him on the arm and looking ready to throw whatever remains in her glass in his face.

"Remember when I told you don't keep secrets from the people you love?" He watches her glare at him, waiting for an answer, so he nods. "So what the fuck was that?"

"What are you-"

"Guerin, if you act like you don't know-"

He puts his hands up in defense, and watches her relax into her chair.

"Alex and I are soulmates," he begins, watching as she rolls her eyes.

"Everyone with two eyes can see that."

Michael files that away for later, because Valenti _definitely_ had not. He's gonna enjoy watching Kyle squirm.

"When I was at the warehouse, I got this pain through my mark, and I felt Alex in pain through the soulbond. It made me pass out - obviously I'm okay," he clarifies, pointing to himself. "But when I woke up at Max's, my soulmark wasn't black anymore."

"What does that mean? Is Alex okay?"

"I don't know." He knows the answer is probably pitiful, and definitely pathetic, but he felt helpless waking up in Max's bed. "Liz and Kyle are seeing if they can find anything. But I Alex has to be fine, at least physically."

Jenna frowns at him, and he lets her think about it for a moment before realization dawns on her. "This didn't happen when he was injured."

Maria returns then, refreshing both their drinks, and Michael watches Jenna grimace a bit, as though she'd been meaning to stop. He tilts his own glass toward her, but she just slides the whole thing in his direction instead.

"I'm gonna head out," Jenna says, standing up. Michael isn't quite prepared for the disappointment that flashes across Maria's face for an instant, before she's covering with a smile.

"I'll call you later" Maria replies, and Michael feels like a third wheel, suddenly aware that there is _definitely_ something going on between them.

"You wanna talk about-"

"No," she immediately replies, cutting him off. "You and I are not talking about _that_ until we find my best friend."

He stares down at his drink, considering Jenna's words earlier. It's not that he is lying to Maria, but he's not sure how telling her Alex might be in danger is supposed to help - he doesn't even know if Alex is in danger. All he wants is for their soulmate bond to work the same way he's heard Max talk about how his works with Liz, how they can share thoughts and emotions, communicating with one another.

"Something did happen when I went to that address on the postcard."

"So you just weren't going to tell me?"

"No!" He immediately replies as she raises her eyebrows at him. "Okay, maybe. It was just - it's not a huge thing that happened."

"Yeah, I'll be the judge of that." 

"It was an abandoned warehouse, nothing there, no one around. But I went and I waited, because it's Alex, and- I was leaving, because it seemed like a waste, and there was this, pressure, on my soulmark. By the time I got outside, Maria, it felt like my shoulder was on fire. And the bond itself - it was just pain and agony, worse than anything I'd ever felt before."

She reaches out and takes his hand in her own, her eyes going soft for a moment.

"Max found me after I passed out."

"And Alex?"

Michael shakes his head, frustrated. "I know he's alive. And I will find him."

**\--------**

He knows it's probably not the best idea, but right now his mind isn't really thinking about much besides _find Alex._ He drives past the Manes home three times before finally parking on the street. It's a nice neighborhood, somewhere Max or Isobel would fit in, not him. 

His cell phone rings, but he ignores it, rolling his eyes at Max's name on the caller ID. He'll no doubt have to deal with him later, but for right now, Michael wants to confront Jesse Manes and demand to know what happened to Alex. There's a car in the driveway, which tells Michael that Jesse is in the house. 

Michael doesn't have to wait much longer before the garage door is opening, and he slides out of the truck, crossing the street and walking up the driveway. He sends a wave of force using his telekinesis out, and watches as Jesse Manes flies back against the interior door.

"Where is Alex?"

He allows Jesse Manes a fraction of a second to regain his bearings, as he bends down to pick up the walking cane that's fallen. Except Jesse Manes hadn't been using the cane, he'd just been holding it in his hand, and in such a manner that it wouldn't do any good if he really needed it.

Was he faking the entire thing?

Alex had told him about his father's stroke, and the extended hospital stay. Michael had refused to feel anything except disgust toward the man who was Alex's father. He knew bits and pieces of the kind of childhood Alex had, what kind of father Jesse Manes had been.

"I don't - I don't know."

He gets up right in Jesse Manes face, the walking cane still clutched in his hand, and pushes the handle underneath Jesse's chin. "I don't believe you."

"I just found out he's missing!"

He stares at Jesse Manes, this man who ten years ago decided that taking a _hammer_ to Michael's hand was an acceptable reaction to finding his son with another boy. This _monster_ who threw Alex up against a wall, who had no problem wrapping a hand around his child's neck and leaving a mark. 

"Bullshit."

He watches Jesse's eyes dart around, searching. There's no one around except the two of them, no one is going to be pulling Michael off him.

"Flint might."

Michael scoffs.

"I'm supposed to believe that you didn't have anything to do with Alex going missing just days after talking to you."

"Flint was there too. He knew what Alex asked about," the reply is quick, and Michael considers for a moment before tossing the notion aside. If Flint Manes is involved, that means Jesse is as well. 

"Michael!" 

Still holding onto Jesse, keeping him pressed up against the interior door with his telekinesis, Michael turns to face Max, who's standing at the front of the garage.

Great.

"Fuck off, Max."

He wants Max to leave, he will handle this. Max doesn't need to involve himself-

Michael feels his body stiffen, as if he's suddenly being held in place, and stares back at Max, confused. He knows Max hasn't developed telekinesis yet, only-

Isobel.

He lets Jesse Manes drop to the ground, and waits as Isobel releases him. Able to move again, he throws the walking cane to the ground, rounding on Max.

"I didn't ask for your help," Michael seethes, feeling every ounce of rage and chaos that occupies his mind. "I can handle this."

"We'll find him, but this is not the way to do it."

"He took Alex!"

He knows he sounds a bit unhinged at the moment, but he _feels_ that way too. Alex missing has set off something in him, and Michael isn't even sure if he'll be able to stop until he knows Alex is safe. For the first time since he realized Alex was missing, Michael wonders if this is related to the soulmarks, if the reason he's so singularly focused at the moment is their connection.

"Turn around, Michael."

He listens, and lets Max handcuff him. It's infuriating that this is the position Max is taking, but it'll be useless trying to fight against Max _and_ Isobel.

Neither of them say another word to Jesse Manes, leaving him sprawled on the concrete floor of the garage, and Michael lets Max lead him to the patrol car parked at the end of the driveway.

"Isobel's going to bring your truck to the station."

He nods, and lets Max stuff him into the backseat.

**\--------**

It's hours later when he can finally leave the sheriff's department, Max deciding to put on some sort of show and keep him locked up in the holding cell for the remainder of the day. Michael'd tried to make the most of it, antagonizing Max, napping, and thinking about his next step in getting Alex back.

Jenna had shown up for her shift a couple hours after Max had arrested him, had glanced at the holding cell before doing a double take and immediately taking out her cell phone to snap a photo. Sheriff Valenti had taken one look at him spread out on the bench, shook her head, and continued into her office.

His only destination is a bed to sleep in, but as his thoughts keep drifting back to Alex, he winds up heading in the direction of Alex's house instead of the junkyard and the Airstream. And it's not even that it's a bad decision, but he doesn't want to make himself too comfortable in Alex's house or get too used to spending time there.

Will Alex even want him around when this is all over?

Inside Alex's bedroom, he strips down to his boxers and climbs under the covers, burying his face into the pillows he hadn't slept on the other night, and falling asleep thinking of Alex.

A knock in the morning wakes him, jolting him awake, and sending a spike of panic through him before he remembers that he's at Alex's house. He feels more rested than he has in a long time, and tries not to think too hard about what that means as he throws the covers back and grabs his jeans and tshirt off the floor.

Gregory Manes is standing outside on the terrace, and Michael frowns at how he knew to find him here. He hadn't told anyone he was spending the night at Alex's, and he hasn't been here in a couple days.

"Greg?"

"Hey!" Greg greets him, smiling and sounding far more awake than Michael is. "Maria asked me to stop by - she said you'd probably be staying here."

Maria. That made sense.

"Uh, yeah." Michael glances around, covering his eyes from the sun overhead. "You wanna come in?"

Inside, Michael lets Greg meander around as he heads straight into the kitchen to make coffee.

“She tried to fill me in, but said it’d be better to talk to you.” He hears Greg pause, and turns to glance out into the living area, to see Greg standing near the table, taking note of Alex’s cell phone and laptop still in the place Michael had first found them days ago. “She said Alex is missing?”

Realizing Greg isn’t looking at him, Michael stops himself from nodding his head as an answer to the question.

“She made it sound like there’s more to this whole thing,” Greg continues, and Michael pours two mugs of coffee, wishing he could add some acetone to his own, before walking out and setting them down on the table.

“I think your father took Alex.”

He watches Greg fall into one of the chairs at the table, hands on the table in front of him. “I know dad and Alex have their issues but - kidnapping?”

Michael joins him, sitting down in the nearest chair. “Pretty sure he’s looking for a way to get to me.”

“You?”

“After the 1947 crash-”

“The UFO crash?”

Michael nods, eyebrows raised at the surprise in Greg’s voice, confirmation that he’s never been brought in on the Manes family business of hunting aliens.

"After the crash,” Michael starts again. “The Air Force established an operation called Project Shepherd to deal with the alien survivors. Your family has been running it since it’s inception."

“And Alex is involved?”

“Not exactly. Project Shepherd _hunts_ aliens.”

Gregory frowns. “That doesn’t sound like Alex.”

“No, it’s not Alex, you’re right.” Michael smiles, thinking about the day Alex had shown up at the junkyard, the moment he’d realized Alex already knew everything, and all he could do was fill in the blanks. "But getting to Alex, means he can get to me. And your father has a particular interest in getting his hands on aliens from the crash."

"So hold up - his whole vendetta against invaders? All that crazy talk when we were kids - it's _true_ ?" Gregory replies in disbelief. "You don't _look_ like an alien."

"I know you were expecting little green men," Michael jokes, smiling. "Sorry to disappoint."

"And Alex knows?" It's the most obvious question.

Michael nods.

"Are there others?" Gregory asks, and then pauses, frowning. "Is that why you were always hanging out with the Evans twins?"

"Nothing gets past you, huh?"

Gregory laughs, leaning back in his chair. “Sorry, that’s just a lot to process.”

“Well, there’s one more thing.” Michael looks over, and watches as Greg makes a motion with his hand, asking him to proceed. “Alex and I are soulmates. Our marks showed up when we were seventeen.”

Greg raises an eyebrow, as if that’s the _least_ surprising thing he’s ever heard. "I know I haven't been the best brother, and I know I have a lot to make up for, but I'm not blind. Plus, it wasn't like Alex never talked about you. He just - he never mentioned you by name. But there was some _chatter_ after Prom your senior year, standing up for Alex like you did.”

Michael shakes his head, laughing. Of course there he’d been the topic of gossip, it was probably the first time anyone at that school had given him a second thought. 

“Wait,” Michael realizes, letting it process what Greg has just said, feeling the world shift beneath him. “He talked about me?”

"Yeah," Greg continues, and Michael is floored. He’d always believed that Alex had been ashamed of him, that he hadn’t mentioned him to anyone. "I think Maria called you Alex’s _Museum Guy_."

A nickname because of where they'd had their first kiss, of course. Michael feels the ground shifting at not only Maria knowing all along, but Greg too. He’d believed for almost a decade that Alex had been ashamed of him, had kept him a secret from even the most important people in his life.

“But how does our father know? That’s not something Alex would just openly talk about.”

Michael sighs, thinking of the research Alex had pulled, and all the things he’d read while looking through the hard drives from Caulfield. “I have a theory that someone tipped your father off after Alex’s accident.”

“Soulmarks would be notated in a medical chart, if they came across it.” Greg shrugs, leaning back in his chair, before frowning. “And yours?”

“I think your father saw mine the day he found me and Alex together when we were seventeen.” He doesn’t mention what happened at the warehouse, doesn’t plan to unless Gregory brings it up as part of the information Maria had given him. 

“Is Flint involved in any of this?” Michael grimaces, and Greg shakes his head. “No, it makes sense. I thought it was odd he was transferred out of his posting in Germany and back to New Mexico. He even bought a house near Ruidoso, so there’s no way he hasn’t been in touch with our father.”

It’s interesting, to hear Gregory talk so openly about Flint, given how tight-lipped Alex has always been about his family. He’s always assumed that maybe one day they’d learn more about each other, besides the little conversations here and there they’ve had.

“Listen, if he is, I’ll handle it.” Greg continues, standing up. “I spent years distancing myself from the family - from our father especially. I just need to know what I’m getting into so I can help find Alex.”

He lets out a sigh of relief, because it feels good to know that Gregory wants to help find his brother. That there are in fact other good Manes men out there besides Alex.

“Do you think Flint will talk to you?”

“It’s worth a shot, don’t you think?” Michael nods, because it definitely is. Anything to try and figure out where Alex is being held, they just need a starting point. He takes the hand Greg holds out, and shakes it. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

**\--------**

It takes another two days of Greg’s recon work, talking to Flint and needling information out of him to find out about the abandoned mental hospital an hour outside Los Alamos. Greg doesn’t offer up how he found out the location, but Michael has a hunch it boiled down to just following Flint. It’s the simplest explanation, but Greg texts him the address and leaves it to him to decide when they’re going.

Of course, he wants to go immediately.

While Greg had been out following Flint around, Michael had gone to Liz to ask her for help in developing a serum to mute the soulbound connection. If he’s going to be going into someplace unknown to rescue Alex, he needs to make sure what happened at the abandoned warehouse doesn’t happen again.

“I swear you won’t feel any different!”

He’s skeptical of the experimental serum, regardless of if he’d been the one to ask for it. The memory of what happened the last time to Isobel still fresh in his mind, and they don’t have time to stick him in a pod and develop an antidote if something goes wrong.

“Explain it again.”

Liz rolls her eyes, like it’s a great hardship on her to explain the science behind something she’d created.

“All it’s going to do is mute the connection so it can’t be used against you again.”

“And it’s not going to kill me?”

“The soulmarks aren’t like your abilities. When I created that serum, I was targeting the electromagnetic current that tied directly into your cells. We can survive without the soulmark connection, it’s not vital to someone’s existence.”

Michael sighs because he knows it’s not _vital_ , but that doesn’t mean losing that connection once you have it doesn’t mess with a person.

“I started hypothesizing about creating this type of serum after Max died,” she continues, her voice quieter now. “I just needed to know if there was some way to make the pain of losing him-” She cuts herself off, turning back to her workstation, dropping the syringe, and bracing her hands on the edge of the table.

“Make it easier to deal with it. I get it.”

For a moment she doesn’t move, but he hears her take a deep breath, turning to face him again.

“I knew, hypothetically, what would happen. But it didn’t really hit me until I couldn’t feel him anymore. All those years, of being able to sense him, and it was just suddenly _gone_. For weeks, I couldn’t look in the spot where my mark was, I was in such a deep denial that he was truly gone.” She pauses, picking up the syringe again and taking a step toward him. “But even without the soulmate bond I would have been devastated just the same.”

He eyes the needle in her hand. “How did it feel when you got his heart beating again?”

“It felt like I could breathe again.” She’s smiling as she speaks now, and Michael knows that one some level, it’s going to feel like that when he’s got Alex back, when he knows Alex is alive and safe. Even if they don’t have that same soulbond connection Liz and Max have, at least he’ll know Alex is okay.

He watches as she swabs at his arm with a cotton ball, though he’s never been sure if it’s something they actually need due to their apparent immunity to human disease, but he keeps quiet and lets her press the needle into his skin.

“Can I ask you a question?” She drops the syringe in one of the medical bins in the lab, and turns back around to face him, looking slightly nervous. “And you don’t have to answer, I just-”

“Spit it out, Liz.”

“You and Alex - why’d you never say anything? Why didn’t he?”

It’s not exactly a surprising question. He’s had it out with Max, he’s talked about it with Isobel, and avoided it with Maria. But there are two different questions Liz is potentially asking, one about him and Alex being together, and the other solely about Alex and the information he’d chosen to share.

“You mean about him being out?” Michael asks, picking the easier of the two.

Liz shrugs her shoulders a bit, unsure. “Maybe? I mean, he’s been out to me and Maria since we were teenagers, and we always tried to be supportive-”

Michael shakes his head, interrupting. “He loves you guys, he trusts you. But being out in this town, that can be something completely different.”

“How come I’ve never seen _you_ with any men?”

He smirks at the slight shift in the topic, but happily takes the bait if it means he doesn’t have to talk about his relationship with Alex. “I flirt with just as many men as I do women. People just end up seeing what they want to see.”

Maria had asked the same question once, and he hadn’t held back with her in revealing the truth either. It hadn’t surprised him she’d been under the assumption he was straight, because it had been an image he’d crafted for himself over the years, a sort of armor against the small-minded conservatives. But he’d told her, if she paid attention and looked closer at his interactions, she’d see that he wasn’t just flirting with women and being friendly with men. He smiles now at the memory of the absolutely _scandalized_ look on her face that she’d never noticed.

“And Maria?”

He sighs, because he'd honestly been expecting it. Liz had egged him on in acting on his feelings for Maria months ago, so it was unsurprising that now she wanted to know more.

“I dated Maria because I liked her. And I wanted to be with someone who wanted to be with me. Who made me happy, and let me take care of them.” He cuts himself off, running a frustrated hand through his hair, not wanting to say something he’ll regret.

“You think you and Alex will figure it out?”

Michael shrugs. “Nothing’s written in stone, right?”

He watches Liz raise an eyebrow, and smiles. The soulmarks may not be stone, but the black lines certainly do feel permanent.

The door to the lab opens revealing Max, and behind him, Jenna and Gregory.

“All ready to go?” Jenna asks, eyebrows raised.

Michael gestures toward the door, and pushes off where he’s been leaning against one of the tables, grabbing his hat and jacket from where he dropped them on one of the lab stools earlier.

“How long will it last?” He asks, standing in the open doorway to the lab.

Liz doesn’t even pick up her head from whatever she’s reading in front of her.

“Hypothetically, about twelve hours. Be safe, you guys.”

Michael catches Max staring back at Liz, like they’re having some telepathic soulmate conversation, and pushes past. He doesn’t need to see the two of them making heart eyes at one another right now.

**\--------**

Using the information Greg had obtained from following Flint, they park a half mile away from the warden’s house, deciding it safer to go the rest on foot. Greg takes point, and Jenna brings up the rear as the three of them head toward the house. Michael uses his telekinesis to open the side door to the house, while Max and Jenna scout out the area to keep watch. They agree to text if they see anyone approaching, and Gregory pushes open the door, stepping inside.

Inside, the house is furnished and actually looks lived in, which immediately sets something off to Michael, because it means that Gregory had been correct. The kitchen is spotless, but a quick glance at the sink shows a coffee mug and a glass waiting to be washed - so not only had someone been there recently, someone had plans to return soon.

Michael hangs back as Gregory pushes ahead, and listens as the floor quietly creaks, and doors are pushed open. In the living room, it looks as though no one’s been there. Bare, minimalist sofas, a coffee table with a thin layer of dust, and curtains drawn to block out anyone looking in. A little different from the picture the kitchen paints.

Finally, he hears voices, muffled by distance and the walls of the house, and carefully walks down the hallway toward the noise, quickly taking in the doors that Gregory has left open as he’d checked room by room. The last door on the left is open, and as Michael looks in, he sees Gregory kneeling in front of Alex. Alex, who is handcuffed to a chair that is bolted to the floor. The room itself is sparse, a mattress shoved into one corner, Alex’s boots and prosthetic next to the door - far out of reach if he’s been kept handcuffed.

Michael stands just inside the door, shocked still for a moment as he watches Gregory hold Alex’s face in his hands, gently trying to wake him up. 

“Is he-”

No, Michael stops himself before he barely gets the words out. He knows his mark is still there on his back, even if the color has been wrong. It had started to fade back toward black that morning, the red tint less noticeable as he’d stood in front of the mirror to look at it. 

With one more glance at the handcuffs around Alex’s wrists and ankle, Michael reaches out with his telekinesis and unlatches them, watching as they fall away, and Gregory nods in thanks. With his feet feeling as though they’re still stuck to the floor, Michael watches as Gregory tries to rouse Alex again, this time lightly slapping at his cheeks, trying to stir him awake. 

His phone pings with a text.

 **From Max:** Incoming.

“Someone’s here.”

Michael watches as Gregory shakes his head, before standing up, and Michael finally is able to move, getting his hands on Alex, immediately feeling like he’s checking him over for injuries. There’s a bruise on his cheek, and his lip is split, and Michael smiles at Alex _fighting back_ , though not at the idea of someone hurting him. 

“I need you to wake up,” Michael begs, running his hands over Alex’s face, and through his hair, desperate to see him open his eyes. He lets his hand drift down Alex's neck, dipping below his t-shirt, fingers brushing over where he knows Alex’s mark is, wondering and hoping that maybe it can finally for the first time in eleven years actually be useful to them, and wordlessly presses against the bond. “Come on, come on-”

He watches as Alex sucks in a huge gasp of air, his eyes quickly blinking awake, taking in Michael in front of him, and the room around him. There’s a bit of panic there, and an assessment of how to handle whatever it is he’s been dealing with, before his gaze lands firmly on Michael, his eyes softening, and his shoulders dropping. Michael makes the split second decision to lean forward, wrapping his arms around Alex, pulling him close. He buries his face in Alex’s neck, breathing him in, and gives himself a moment to just relish in the fact that Alex is _alive_. He tries not to think too hard about how much Alex's touch grounds him, bringing a sense of calm to the chaos constantly running through his mind.

“You shouldn’t have come,” Alex says as Michael finally leans back, and out of the embrace. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“And miss my chance to be a knight in shining armor?” He can’t help but joke about it, even though he knows Alex is right. It _is_ dangerous for him to be here, but he had still made the decision.

As if there was even a decision to make.

"Why can't I-" Alex begins, before cutting himself off, shaking his head.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, it's nothing. Can you give me my leg?"

There's something there, something Michael is missing, in the question Alex stopped himself from asking. But right now isn't the time to argue, Michael knows. He can ask later.

Down the hallway, they hear two voices before gunshots ring out through the house, and hopes that Gregory is okay.

“Who’s here? With you?”

“Max and Jenna have got the perimeter, and Gregory-”

Alex shakes his head. “He’s fine. He’ll be fine.”

Michael doesn’t argue about how it sounds like Alex is trying to convince himself that his brother is okay. Instead, he stands up, and retrieves Alex’s prosthetic and boots from where they’d been left, and closes and locks the door to give them time in case it’s needed.

“Are you okay?”

Alex nods. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“If they hurt you-”

“Michael,” Alex says, pausing his movements and looking at him, eyes pleading. “I’m fine.”

He watches, rather helplessly as Alex sets himself to rights, getting to work putting his prosthetic back on, and slipping his boot on. A moment later, Alex is next to him, holding a hand up to keep quiet and they listen for noise out in the hallway. They stand off to the side, both listening as a set of footsteps make their way down the hallway closer to them.

When the lock jiggles, Alex reaches his arm out in front of Michael to stop him from moving. And with the first sound of a body trying to force its way inside, Alex steps in front of Michael, a move that immediately frustrates him. He wants to push Alex back, protect him instead - but isn’t that the way of them? Always protecting one another no matter what?

The door flies open, and Jesse Manes steps through, gun held out in front of him as he surveys the room, and from their vantage point, Michael watches as he notes the empty chair and the opened restraints, before stepping out in front of Alex and using his telekinesis to pull the weapon from Jesse’s hands, letting it land in his own. Just as Jesse turns around to face him, Michael pushes him back against the wall and holds him there as he hands the gun over to Alex, who immediately takes it.

“Guerin!” Alex yells a moment before Michael feels the prick of a needle in his arm. He spins around and comes face-to-face with Flint Manes, who drops the needle and pulls out his own gun, pointing it immediately at Michael. 

A second later, Michael hears Jesse Manes hit the floor behind him.

“Not so tough without your alien abilities, huh?”

“Drop the gun, Flint,” Alex says, as Michael watches him press his own into the back of Flint’s head.

“You really gonna choose _them_ over your family, Alex? I thought you’d finally _learned_.”

It wasn’t so long ago that Michael had believed that Alex had chosen them, had enlisted and left him because he was choosing his family, even before Alex knew the truth. And there are still days Michael has doubts, still wonders if maybe he’s gotten it wrong and Alex will never fully be able to choose him over the family he shares a name and blood with. But standing here, in this room, where that family had held Alex captive in order to continue their own senseless vendetta, Michael realizes he may have been wrong - Alex couldn’t choose them.

“Michael _is_ my family.”

It’s not the first time Alex has said those words, referred to Michael that way. But he does wonder if maybe some day, perhaps Alex could say it to him when they weren’t moments away from dying in an exploding building or when no one had a gun pointed to their head.

He watches in awe a moment later as Alex disarms Flint, keeping a gun trained on his back. Michael breathes the tiniest sigh of relief at no longer having a weapon pointed at him, before a gunshot rings out from somewhere to his left, instinctively ducking out of the way before glancing down at his own torso to see if he’s okay. Assessing that he was in fact, _not_ shot, Michael glances up at Alex, who also remains unharmed, and has his gun still firmly trained on Flint.

It’s when he starts to turn around he notices the blood splatter, and Jesse Manes slumped against the wall, another gun held in his hand.

“What the-” Michael turns toward the door to see Gregory standing there. He nods at Michael before dropping his gun, his hands clutching his side, and falls against the doorframe. Taking a step towards him, Michael notices the blood staining Gregory’s shirt underneath his jacket, no doubt from the earlier scuffle he and Alex had heard. 

“What did you do?” Michael hears Flint demand, as if he hadn’t been the one to shoot his own brother.

“Greg!” Alex calls out as Michael falls to Gregory’s side, slipping out of his own overshirt, and immediately placing pressure on the wound, trying to staunch the flow of blood. 

Too focused on Gregory, Michael doesn’t see Alex knock Flint out, but he does hear him fall to the floor, before Alex is crouching next to him, his hands on top of Michael’s in a slight panic.

Somewhere off to his right, Michael hears the familiar sound of Max’s footsteps, and says the first thing that comes to mind.

“Call Valenti.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Chapter three will be up this weekend!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, chapter three!
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has read, subscribed, left kudos, and commented. I hope you enjoy this next part just as much! 
> 
> <3

Sleeping in the Airstream again, Michael tries to not think about how much he misses being surrounded by all things Alex. After all, it had just been a couple days he'd stayed at Alex's house, it couldn't have affected him that much. Waking up each day, he doesn't feel quite as rested as he had while sleeping at Alex's, but chooses to ignore it, making his coffee extra strong and tries to stay busy at the junkyard, keeping his focus on the oil changes and the worn down breaks the residents of Roswell keep showing up with. 

After two nights of restless sleep, he gives in, pulling up Alex's name in the contacts on his phone, and sending off a text.

 **To Alex:** Can you stop by? When you're free.

He doesn't expect a reply, doesn't know if he believes Alex will even show up. So much of them in the past has been Alex asking and Michael agreeing. He's never been the one to ask, to verbalize when he wanted something. But right now, more than anything, he needs to see Alex.

He hadn't stuck around long when they'd gotten back to the lab, Kyle already there, and Greg in capable hands. If anything, his thoughts had been caught up in how he'd be involved in helping move _another_ body, until Max had slapped him on the shoulder, relieving him of that responsibility. For a moment he'd been grateful, but as he thinks back on it now, he wonders if it was right of him to put all that on Max.

He almost slams his head on the hood of Mr. Jenkins' old best up sedan when he notices a familiar grey SUV pull into the junkyard, and ignores the skip of excitement his heart does at Alex receiving his message and actually showing up.

“You came,” He says, trying to sound nonchalant, and knowing he’s failing miserably.

Alex shrugs, a small smile on his face. "You asked me to."

"How's Greg?"

It's the easier question of the ones he wants to ask.

"He's doing good." He watches Alex for a moment, the slightest twitch to his brow before continuing. "He's been staying at Maria's. Not sure who's enjoying that more."

"She was a lot of help. When I realized something had happened to you."

Michael wonders though, why Greg is staying at Maria's instead of Alex's, or why he'd chosen to stay in Roswell instead of heading back to the reservation. Didn't he have a home and a job to get back to?

"I'm glad you texted," Alex says, and Michael notices the messenger bag on his shoulder as Alex pulls out a folder. But he doesn't open it, instead it stays clutched in his hands, as Alex wavers for a moment, shifting on his feet. "I wanted to show you something."

They each take a seat in one of the lawn chairs around the fire pit, Michael pushing one closer to Alex so he can see the contents of the folder. As Alex flips it open, Michael realizes it's more information from the Caulfield drives, and immediately leans back, not sure he wants to hear about this _right now_. Because is this what Alex has been doing in the days since?

He watches Alex snap the folder shut again.

"After Kyle made sure Greg was okay, he asked me about my mark, and what happened while I was gone, and filled me in about what happened to you. It was a bit strange because he and I have never discussed soulmarks before - I've never really discussed mine with anyone except Maria. But there he was, showing me a picture on his phone of your mark and asking if the same thing had happened to me."

Alex flips open the folder again, flipping through the paperwork, and Michael realizes its nerves.

"And I didn't know what he meant until I saw that, because I never got to see mine while my father had me." He pauses, closing the folder again. Alex isn't looking at him, his gaze focused somewhere in the distance. "That day, my father had tried to touch my mark, and nothing should have happened - Maria and I used to poke at Liz's when we were younger, when we were curious - but somehow he was able to hijack our bond. So I spent the past couple days searching the Caulfield drives and Project Shepherd again, and I found something - Caulfield had been researching and developing a way to weaponize the soulmarks and their bond. They believed it would lead them to discovering more aliens."

Michael doesn't like where this is going. "Lemme guess, they never did?"

"Liz and Kyle weren't able to find anything when they looked because after the fire in the 80's, the remaining research was re-coded and the reference points changed." Finally, Alex looks over at him, holding out the folder, and Michael wishes he hadn't. "Caulfield had only been able to locate one bonded pair through this method."

He flips it open, scanning the document, and turning the page.

It's a photo of a soulmark on the side of a woman’s abdomen, just below her rib cage. The photo is zoomed in, nowhere near as graphic as the one he remembers Alex showing him when he'd pulled that first bit of information on his mother.

"Are you saying my mom had a soulmark?"

Alex nods. "And a soulmate."

"Does it say who?"

Alex shakes his head, and Michael hadn't been expecting much. His mother wasn't even referred to by name in the documents from Caulfield, her intake form the only time "Nora Truman" appeared, so far as they knew. She'd been reduced to an alphanumeric sequence for seventy years, locked up, and experimented on. He thought finding out more about her would make him feel better, would make him feel closer to her. How wrong he'd been.

"Only that the human soulmate died as a result."

Michael feels his blood run cold at the idea that Alex could have _died_ from whatever Jesse had done, and he'd still gone through with it. Suddenly, Jesse Manes dying by a gunshot to the head by one of his sons doesn't sound like it was harsh enough. Too quick.

"Hey," Alex's voice breaks through the haze of his thoughts, and Michael feels him slip his hand into his own. "I'm right here."

As he focuses on the single contact point between them, Michael remembers he'd asked Alex here. He just hopes Alex won't ask what he texted about, and maybe Michael won't have to admit that he'd just wanted to be near Alex.

**\--------**

Michael retreats down into his bunker after Alex leaves. He's thankful Alex hadn't inquired about why Michael had asked him to the junkyard in the first place. However, Alex's information about his mother has him distracted now, his mind drifting to the console that lays unfinished in the bunker beneath the Airstream.

He holds the last remaining fragment in his hands, and wonders what exactly Alex must have been thinking that day he'd found it. To find a piece of something _alien_ , and have to keep it to himself as he tried to find out more information. There had been a moment, where he'd wondered if there had been a specific event that had set Alex off into looking into his father, to eventually stumble across Project Shepherd. But when Alex had mentioned that he'd simply followed his father, gathering intel and searching for leverage, he'd realized Alex had been looking into a way to get back at his father since he was a kid, and the console fragment was able to steer him in the right direction.

It's been weeks since Alex had returned it to him, teary-eyed and claiming that he couldn’t be _another_ Manes standing in his way. The words had made something in Michael’s heart shatter, to know that Alex thought of himself that way, instead of something good in Michael’s life. So he hadn’t attached the piece, instead held on to it waiting for - he wasn’t sure what. But allowing the console to fully assemble felt so final, and Michael hadn’t been ready for that.

Now, he stands in the bunker, and holds the last piece in place over the spot where it should seamlessly mold back into place. He watches as it knits back together, and the console becomes one whole piece again. Michael stares for a moment in wonder, at how he’s spent the past decade collecting and scavenging for fragments all over Roswell, from the crash site on Foster Ranch to pieces that had ended up in Grant Green’s UFO Emporium. Symbols begin to illuminate, one by one, and it takes a moment for Michael to realize it's a repeating sequence.

Curiosity takes over, and he reaches out, tapping a finger to each symbol as it lights up, and notices in the middle as the beacon symbol appears. Michael reaches out, placing his hand over it and instinctively closes his eyes. 

The same kind of calm he feels when he’s playing music washes over him, his mind suddenly quiet and free of the chaos, slowly replaced by a feeling, like someone is reminding him how much they love him. Michael doesn’t understand _how_ he knows, but he keeps his hand on the console and wonders if maybe, perhaps, this is a message from his mother. And just like that, as the thought of her comes to the forefront of his mind, so does she. Except she’s not the old woman who’d been stuck in Caulfield, but young and beautiful, no sign of worry or fear in her eyes. 

Her smile is infectious, and Michael wishes he’d had more time with her. That he _remembered_ his time with her. He wishes they'd gotten more time together, that he hadn't been forced to grow up alone. How different would his life be if she'd taken him out of the pod in 1947? If they'd left Roswell and settled elsewhere?

He watches her shake her head, as though she's able to tell what he’s thinking, as if she’s really there communicating with him, and Michael feels his mind start to go calm again.

There’s a banging, somewhere in the distance, and he loses his focus, watching helplessly as his mother fades away, disappearing out of view, until he’s opening his eyes, and he’s back in his bunker, the console no longer illuminated, and the pounding is someone trying to get in.

“Michael! I swear if you’re dead-”

He shakes his head at Isobel’s voice, and uses his telekinesis to swing the hatch door open, waiting as she descends the ladder. He can’t take his eyes off the console though, and whatever just happened to him. He’d seen his mother again, that was all he knew, and at the moment, that was all that mattered.

“Is everything okay?"

Michael nods, finally tearing his eyes away. 

“I’m fine, Iz.”

He doesn’t miss the way she sizes him up, not believing a word he’s saying, and watches as she takes in the console, but notices she doesn’t attempt to touch it yet.

“Is this-”

“From the ship? Yeah, I uh, reassembled it.”

That’s when she turns on him, eye narrowing. “And you’ve just had it here this whole time?”

“I only just found the last piece to complete it."

Her demeanor changes a bit at that, and she takes a step closer, hand hovering near it, but still not touching. She’s been the one, along with Max, who never questioned their origins, never wondered where they came from, or why they were here. That was always something Michael did by himself - trips out to Foster Ranch as a child, searching for any scrap of the ship he could get his hands on. Years of filling up notebook after notebook with calculations and schematics, trying to redesign the spaceship and understand the way off this planet.

“So what’s it do?”

“I think it’s some sort of communication device.”

Isobel narrows her eyes at him again.

“Communicate with who?”

“When I assembled it, there was this sequence,” Michael moves back toward the console, pointing out some of the symbols that had light up earlier. “I saw my mother.”

He watches as Isobel holds her hand out now, carefully letting a fingertip run over one of the symbols. When nothing happens, her shoulders deflate for a moment, and Michael wonders if there’s a reason it isn’t reacting to her. They still don’t know enough about the crash, about who they are or where they’re from. Or even why they're here.

Questions he wished he could get answers to. But every time he's come close to it, the opportunity has been snatched away.

"Can I ask you a question, Iz?"

She turns around, away from the console, so that she's facing him.

"Did you ever want a soulmate?"

Her face softens, and she walks over, enveloping him in a hug for a moment before stepping back. He watches as she grabs one of the work stools, and sits down, leaning on the light table in the middle of the room.

"Because of how Max used to wax poetic about Liz? No, not really. But for a while, I did wonder why it never showed up with Noah." She shakes her head.

"And now?"

"Now I'm happier on my own. I had this idea of what would make us the perfect couple, and bring us closer together. In hindsight, I wasn't really looking at him, but more the idea of him, and what having that connection with someone meant."

Michael nods, because he doesn't blame Isobel for not wanting one after everything with Noah. For wanting to take time just for herself. He's been proud of her in the weeks since, how far she's come.

"Max did sound kinda ridiculous, didn't he?"

They both laugh, and it feels good. He enjoys talking to Isobel like this. 

"You know, you're kinda pathetic yourself," she says after a moment. "Just in a different way. It's fun, I have two lovesick brothers who can't get their shit together."

Michael shakes his head. "Thanks, Iz."

"It's what I'm here for."

**\--------**

(Several weeks earlier)

_“I think I’m going to break up with Guerin.”_

_In the kitchen, Alex stills where he’s pouring hot water into two mugs for tea, wondering if he’s heard Maria right. She’d showed up at his door unannounced, but not unwelcome. There’d been a look on her face, concern etched into her features that had made him pull her into a hug, and inside the house. She was the one with the intuition, the ability to tell what someone else was feeling or thinking or feeling. Though sometimes he could tell when she was holding back and putting on a brave face. Even when she didn’t need to._

_But hadn’t things been going good for them? Had something happened that this was now on her mind? Every time he saw the two of them together, they seemed happy, and Alex was happy for them. Or at least he was trying. And what else was he supposed to feel? Maria had been his closest confidant since they were teenagers, and Michael… Alex had started to wonder if maybe there were too many external factors that had helped contribute to the mess between them. But no matter how hard he'd tried, that hope remained that one day they'd be together. Even if for right now "friends" seemed to be all they could be._

_In the living room, Alex slides the two mugs onto the coffee table and drops onto the sofa._

_“Break up? Why?”_

_He watches Maria glance down at the mug, before looking over at him._

_“Things have been good between us. I really do care about him a lot,” Maria pauses for a moment, shifting on the bench. “But there’s a part of me that knows it was never going to be forever.”_

_The soulmark._

_“Maria-”_

_She immediately holds her hand up, and he stops speaking, waiting for her to continue._

_“Not every relationship has to be some all-consuming, ‘til death do us part, kind of commitment. Being with Guerin has been good. It’s been amazing at times,” she continues, smiling, and Alex wonders what memories she's thinking of to cause that reaction. “Better than I’d imagined it could be back when I was still trying to convince myself it was just a drunken hookup in Texas.”_

_Alex nods, understanding, despite the nagging in his gut. “I just don’t want you to feel like-”_

_“Alex.” There’s a hardness to her voice, and Alex meets her gaze, almost afraid not to. “This isn’t me feeling like I can’t have something I want because he was yours first.”_

_He ignores the implication that he somehow has called dibs, simply by having been in a relationship with Michael first._

_“But?”_

_Maria smiles. “But there is a soulmark on your back that matches the one on his, and maybe it shouldn’t matter, but every time I look at it, I can’t help but wonder if I’m keeping you from being happy.”_

_“He still chose you,” Alex insists, even if he understands what she’s saying. He doesn’t know if he’d be able to date someone who already had a soulmark, who already had a soulmate out there somewhere. No matter what the history between the two people were - the presence of that mark would always mean there was someone else. “He and I still have so much to work through, even if we wanted to be together.”_

_“So? Work on it.” She’s challenging him, daring him to keep coming up with excuses, and he knows then that no matter what he says, she’s going to have a counter argument. “These marks aren’t random, there is a reason people end up with them.”_

_"Sometimes it feels like they're more trouble than they're worth." Maria raises her eyebrows, and gives him a pointed side-eye look. "I just mean, there's not a whole lot of information on them."_

_"What kind of information do you need?"_

_"I just want to understand them.”_

_It’s what he’s been doing, running searches on any mention of them in the Caulfield drives, compiling information and trying to understand why they appeared in the first place, and what the bond exists for. And in the end, it has only led him to wonder why he and Michael can't make it work between them - why the soulmarks and the bond have never been enough._

_“Don’t do that.” He frowns at Maria’s words, not understanding her meaning. “Don’t try to logic it away like that. So the marks are there to give you a shove in the right direction, but the rest of it is still up to you. Don’t run away from that.”_

_“I’m not-”_

_Maria leveled him with a look, because wasn’t he? Isn’t that exactly what he did each time the idea of feeling too much for Michael overwhelmed him? Each time they’d crash together, before Alex would leave, forcing distance between them again._

**\--------**

Michael's picking up a part in town that somehow can't be found in Sanders' massive stockpile of junk, when he thinks about how Alex's house isn't too far away. He wonders if he stopped, if Alex would be home, or even if Alex would want to see him.

Would an unannounced visit be unwelcome?

The calm that had settled over him from the console is gone, the chaos that normally reigned inside him back at full speed, and Michael wishes it could have been a permanent change. It makes him miss playing the guitar, of being able to pick up an instrument when he needed to focus and just play. His left hand is still wrapped in a bandana, but he realizes he’s been thinking about it more and more in the recent days, which is the opposite of what he had wanted by covering it up in the first place. 

After all, he hadn’t wanted to see the reminder.

A part of him wondered what Alex thought of it, if there was more to it than just him noticing the way he had after the funeral for Noah. 

“Fuck it,” he mumbles to himself, turning out of the dealer’s parking lot and heading in the direction of the development where Alex lived. 

He’d asked Alex for something, and Alex had given it to him. A tiny request to come to the junkyard to talk. Never in their years of dancing around each other, had Michael tried to be the one asking, he’d been more than content to go where Alex wanted, to take whatever Alex was willing to give. But dating Maria had changed that for him, made him start to believe that maybe he just hadn’t known what a relationship was. Changed his understanding of what he _wanted_ from a relationship with Alex. 

Maria’s red pickup is parked in the driveway next to Alex’s SUV, and Michael curses, wondering if he should just turn around now and abandon the entire thing.

Except from where he’s stopped on the road, he can see Alex and Maria sitting on the terrace with Gregory. The three of them are laughing and smiling, and seeing Alex so relaxed pulls at something inside Michael.

He sighs, realizing he’s probably been noticed, and pushes open the door to get out.

“Guerin!” Maria greets him, a smile on her face as she hops up, wrapping her arms around him. “Alex didn’t say you’d be dropping by.”

Michael steps back, rubbing at the back of his neck, avoiding looking at Alex. “I was nearby, and thought I’d stop.” He jerks his thumb back in the direction of his truck. “I can go if I’m interrupting-”

“Nonsense,” Greg interrupts from the love seat, as Maria holds out a hand instead of sitting back down. "Maria and I were about to leave anyway."

Michael isn't sure he believes that, but he doesn't argue. Instead he watches the way Maria helps Gregory stand up, the way she holds onto his hand, not letting go even after he's up and standing on his own two feet. He can't take his eyes off them, watching as their fingers interlock together for a moment before separating so they can each give Alex a hug good-bye.

Something was going on there. He wasn't sure what, or even how Maria's warning to him about Jenna fit into the picture, but he's intrigued now. Though all that matters to him is that Maria is happy, no matter who she dates or is in a relationship with. Her happiness has always been important to him, even when he'd been the one causing her grief. 

He waits until he hears the crunch of gravel under Greg and Maria's feet before looking at Alex, who's watching him, obviously waiting for him to say something.

How does he explain something he's not even sure he understands himself?

"You can sit down," Alex finally says, breaking the silence. 

Michael nods with his whole body, bouncing on his feet for a moment, and dropping onto the loveseat Gregory and Maria had been occupying before. Except even sitting, he can't stop fidgeting, like there's just a bit too much energy bubbling under the surface. 

"Stay here," Alex commands, standing up and walking towards the front door.

Michael tries to calm himself in the meantime. It's just Alex, and yet his body currently feels like it did that day he'd shown up at the Emporium, asking Alex to _talk_ , and doing everything but as a result. He runs his fingers through his curls, as the self-doubt starts to creep up on him, questioning if Alex even wants him here, wondering if this was a bad idea and maybe he should just leave.

The front door opens, and Alex emerges carrying the familiar black guitar case.

Michael immediately stands up. He can't take Alex's guitar. He can't accept that favor, not again.

“Alex-”

“No,” Alex interrupts, holding out the guitar case, and Michael feels temporarily transported back to that night in the shed when Alex had first offered it to him. “This isn’t a gift, and it’s not a favor. It’s yours, and it always has been.”

Michael takes a step forward, his fingers reaching out and gripping the neck, holding onto it and carefully resting it on the ground. 

“I don’t even know if I remember how to play.”

It’s a lie. Playing the guitar that morning at the Wild Pony, Maria watching from her seat at the bar, it had felt like for the first time in a decade, Michael had been able to attain some level of peace from the chaos in his mind. Before it had been ripped away again by Max’s death.

Alex doesn’t react, and Michael can’t tell if he knows the truth. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Instead, Alex takes a step toward him, and pulls Michael’s left hand into his own, cradling it in his palms, thumbs running over where the bandana is tied. But Michael can’t look away from Alex’s face, watching that crease in his forehead between his eyebrows deepen in concentration. More than once Michael has wanted to reach out and touch those lines, smooth them away and tell Alex how he doesn’t need to carry the weight of the world around on his shoulders. Too memorized by Alex's face,, Michael misses the bandana knot being pulled loose, and the piece of cloth being pulled away, until he feels the tips of Alex’s fingers brush across the unblemished skin of his hand and over the knuckles in the places the damage had been the worst.

Finally, Alex looks up, his eyes wide and pleading and focused.

And who is Michael to say no this time? Maybe this isn’t like all those months ago, when he’d needed space. When he’d thought - believed - Alex didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. When he’d tried to move on, when he’d thought that maybe he could be happy with Maria instead. But neither of them are those same people anymore.

He sits back down on the love seat, and removes the guitar from the case, re-familiarizing himself with the instrument. It's in tune, and Michael realizes he hadn't even noticed when he'd been searching the house to find the clues he knew Alex left for him. Had Alex been hoping one day he'd finally accept it back?

He plays the chords of a song that’s always been stuck in his head, focusing on the strings and where his fingers need to move. He hears Alex's footsteps move across the brick of the terrace, and the slight squeak of the chair as he sits to listen, though Michael doesn't dare look up, choosing instead to remain focused on the sounds of the guitar and the melody he's playing. Allows it to wash over him, calming his mind again, keeping the chaos that rages inside him at bay.

When he finishes, Michael keeps his eyes closed for another moment, letting the last chord ring out and fade away, feels the noise inside him breaking back toward the surface. And when he finally does open his eyes, he sees Alex is watching him, eyes soft, his lips upturned into a small smile.

“Where’d you hear that?”

Michael shrugs. “Just something I’d hum to myself when I needed to focus.”

“It’s beautiful,” Alex says, and there’s something in the way he’s looking back at him, as if Alex knows something that Michael hasn’t quite figured out yet, the pieces not quite slotting into place.

Michael allows his curiosity is going to get the better of him.

“Alex?”

He watches him glance away, but the smile remains. 

"One of the first things I did after the mark showed up was learn how to control the bond. There's not much out there about it, so besides a checkmark in my medical chart, the military basically ignored it's existence. But I'd been convinced back then that I'd already ruined your life, so I wanted to make sure that whatever happened to me couldn't influence anything you did - or wanted to do." Alex pauses, looking back, but not at Michael, his gaze drifting down to his own hands instead. “Over the years, I’d still feel you, all the time. But I’d be on the other side of the world, or hundreds of miles away, so I did the only thing I could think of, and gave you music.”

It’s not until a tear hits his hand, that Michael realizes he’s crying. He’s not even sure why, because he thinks he should actually be furious. All those years, believing that there was something wrong with the bond, with the mark, when that hadn’t been the issue at all. 

“It was the least I could do back then, after everything that happened,” Alex continues, and Michael finds himself shaking his head, quickly reaching up to his own face to wipe away the evidence of his tears. Because no no no, that’s not true at all, Alex is and will always be one of the best parts of his life. 

“You didn’t ruin my life,” Michael counters, reaching down for the case, and slipping the guitar back inside. “What he did that day, what happened - Alex, that isn’t your fault."

Alex nods, but Michael isn’t convinced he’s listening.

“I know that now. Finding out the truth made things easier. But it doesn’t erase that I spent ten years thinking I was the reason you didn’t go to college. That you got stuck here in this town.”

Michael’s never really given it any thought how his own life, the choices he made to give up his scholarship at UNM, to stay in Roswell for Isobel to watch over her, would be seen by others. Because there’s never really been anyone else besides Max and Isobel who ever paid attention to him, or even cared about him. 

"That day you found me, you woke me up and you were physically there in front of me, but there was nothing through the bond." Alex pauses, taking a deep breath and releasing it. "I've been able to feel you every day since the moment it showed up. And when I couldn't, I worried that my father had succeeded in somehow severing it completely. The thought of never feeling you through the bond again terrified me."

He remembers Alex's panic upon waking up, that moment of fear of Michael being there to rescue him. But had that also been there, had Alex said something about not being able to feel him through the bond and he'd missed it?

"Liz created a serum to block it, temporarily. Just so in case whatever had happened before that had made me pass out, didn't happen again."

"Kyle told me," Alex continues. "It was a good idea."

Michael nods along, but doesn't say the _that's what it felt like for me_ that he's thinking because it's not exactly accurate. But he's still frustrated over Alex's confession that he's responsible for Michael thinking their bond was broken.

"I thought - you know I thought there was something wrong with me?" He lays the guitar back in its case now that he's done, and picks up the bandana Alex had dropped on the seat next to him. "In ten years, I've only felt you through the bond three times. And I never knew if you could feel me - I just assumed you didn't because you never said anything."

He notices as he speaks, Alex's eyes go wide, and Michael tries to go over what he's just said that would cause that kind of reaction.

"Three times? You felt the-?"

Alex cuts himself off, not allowing himself to complete the question, and Michael feels his heart stop in his chest.

"I felt _you_. Every bit of pain you were in." Michael tries to keep his voice calm as he recalls that day. "I kept my back turned to the mirror in the Airstream for most of the day, convinced I'd have to watch my soulmark _disappear_. That I felt you _die_ , Alex."

He huffs out a laugh.

"I've almost lost you too many times. I'm tired of thinking something will happen to you, and I won't know until it's too late." He stares down at their hands, and carefully shifts his left into Alex's, interlocking their fingers. "I'm tired of feeling like I'm alone. I want to know what it's like to feel you through the bond all the time."

He watches that eyebrow crinkle reappear between Alex's eyebrows, right along his forehead as Alex stares back at him. 

"We can work on that," Alex replies, and Michael feels a sense of relief that maybe this is what they needed. "But can I ask you something?"

Michael smiles, nodding.

"You don't have to be nervous showing up. I don't want you to ever think I don't want you here."

"I didn't-"

Alex glares at him, and Michael stops speaking. Of course Alex knew what he was feeling. Because Alex could feel everything through the bond. Michael had never been the one trying to control his emotions through it, he'd always pushed up against it trying to get some sort of acknowledgement from Alex.

He knows it's going to take some time for him to be comfortable with the idea of just showing up, and not needing an excuse to stop by. But it feels… hopeful.

**\--------**

The Pony is full of it's usual weekend bustle when Michael walks in - people milling around the pool tables, a singer is set up on the small performance stage - but at least there are a few empty stools at the bar. Sliding into the one furthest from the musical performer, Michael takes his hat off and drops it onto the counter, glancing around. He's hoping Maria is working, though he's never been great at remembering her schedule. There's a text from Alex on his phone that he hasn't answered, and Michael drops the offending piece of technology onto the bar and stares at the screen, as if the reply will somehow magically come to him the longer he stares at it.

Instead he orders whiskey from the first bartender to walk by, and scans the room again. He'd thought he'd try to stop in, have a drink, let himself get lost in the feeling of the buzz of alcohol and acetone like he's become accustomed to over the last decade. But staring at it now, at the amber liquid sloshing around as he picks up the glass, Michael doesn't remember why he ever believed drowning himself in booze was ever the answer. He holds out his left hand, flexing the fingers and all but admiring the perfectly healed skin and bones and muscle that he'd kept covered for the past year, and thinks of how it had felt to hold the guitar in his hands again, to feel the vibration of the strings beneath his fingers, and to let the song flow through him as he played. 

"Finding the answers you're looking for in the bottom of that glass?"

Kyle Valenti slides into the empty seat next to him, and Michael realizes he's not even annoyed. And usually he doesn't even _like_ Kyle Valenti.

"Where's Maria? She owes me free shots."

Michael laughs and shakes his head, and stares back down into his glass. 

"Jesus, Guerin. I did not come here to do the angsty brooding cowboy thing." Kyle pauses for a moment before shaking his head. "This is about Alex, isn't it?"

"What's about Alex?"

Michael looks up to see Maria standing on the other side of the bar, eyeing his untouched glass before she's raising an eyebrow at Kyle.

"I think Guerin is moping," Kyle replies unhelpfully before giving Maria his drink preference.

"Fuck _off_ , Valenti."

Michael watches as Maria laughs, sliding two bottles of beer across the counter toward Kyle, who grabs one easily and takes a sip.

"So this is definitely about Alex," Maria concludes with a wink, leaning on the bar directly across from him. He doesn't want to talk about everything that's going on in his mind about Alex, but Maria is Alex's best friend. If anyone would know where his head is at, it would be her. And, Michael stubbornly admits, so would Kyle.

"All I'm gonna say is, I don't know why you're here, _moping_ , when you could just try talking to him. I've heard how he speaks about you, and I'm pretty sure he was five seconds away from murdering me and making it look like an accident the day I guessed you two were a thing." Kyle takes another sip of his beer, and shifts in his seat, turning to look somewhere behind them. "Now, there is a beautiful woman over there, who I brought here because I enjoy her company, and so I am going to tap out of this little therapy session. All yours, Maria!"

With a slap on his arm, Michael watches Kyle grab the second bottle before he crosses the room toward the row of booths against the back wall, heading directly for a curly black haired woman, and watches as he leans over and gives her a kiss before sliding onto the bench across the table from her. He turns back to Maria, who is making some sort of fruity cocktail for another customer.

"So what's on your mind that you haven't touched your drink?"

Michael sets the glass down on the bartop and runs his fingers through his hair, trying to think of what to say, how to put this problem into words. He stares down at his phone, and at the text message from Alex.

"If you knew who your soulmate was, if you had that bond with them, that connection, would you cut it off?"

Maria whistles low, sliding the cocktail toward the customer a couple seats down, and turning back to him. Her gaze falls to his cell phone, and he watches as she picks it up, reading the text, her eyebrows raising slightly, before placing it back on the bartop. 

“There’s no guidebook to these soul marks and that bond it creates. I think-” Maria cuts herself off, shifting back to grab a shot glass and a bottle of tequila, pouring one for herself, and tipping it back before continuing. “I think if Alex did something like that, he had his reasons, but it doesn’t mean he loves you any less.”

Michael feels like he zeroes in on her use of the word _love_ . There is some part of him that knows that’s what he’s always felt for Alex, but he’s never said that word out loud. He’s always preferred to use his own words for what he feels, _love_ never feeling adequate for the feelings that overtook him regarding Alex. But there have been so many days over the past decade, where Michael has wondered if Alex feels the same. And it hadn’t been until the other day, of realizing that Alex had still been looking for ways to reach out through the bond, to always be there to comfort him when he needed it, that Michael had started to realize he may have been wrong to doubt Alex’s feelings.

But the two of them have always been shit at talking.

“He cares about you a lot, Guerin.”

Michael nods, letting his gaze drift instead to his left hand, to the reminder that it's healed now and he's not hiding it. He doesn't _want_ to hide it anymore.

“You always been this wise, DeLuca?”

Maria smiles. “I’m just glad you’re finally noticing.”

"So, are you gonna tell me what's up with you and Jenna and Gregory?" He knows he's been nosy, and probably a bit of an asshole, but she had said they could discuss it after finding Alex.

"Guerin, if I said it's none of your damn business, would that matter?"

He shrugs. "It might. But come on, Maria, you know I just want you to be happy."

She narrows her eyes at him, sliding another shot glass onto the counter, fills them, and then pushes it toward him. He has no idea why she feels _this_ is something she needs to drink before talking about, but he leaves his alone, and waits as she tips back her own shot.

Maria holds out her hand, palm up, for him to look at. And there, on the inside of her wrist, somewhere he sees almost every time they interact, is a soulmark. It's not like his own, or the one he knows Max and Liz have - this has three distinct parts to it.

Plus, as far as they know, Maria, Jenna, and Greg are all _human_ , which puts a kink in the theory the soulmarks are alien in origin.

"How?"

She shakes her head, but not really looking concerned. "We're not sure. Kyle did some tests, said my blood doesn't contain a specific protein you have? I've been trying to talk to my mom, but that's why I was at Alex's the other day."

"I can help too, ya know."

She smiles, reaching up and patting his cheek.

"I know. Let me just see what Kyle and Alex come up before we've got everyone acting like detectives." She starts to walk away before stopping, nearly tripping over the mat on the floor, and turning back around to glare at him. "Don't you have someplace else to be?"

With a deep breath, Michael pushes the untouched glass of whiskey away, grabs his hat and his phone, waves to Maria, and heads for the exit.

**\---------**

It feels like muscle memory, driving to the Manes home, and parking the truck in the alley back near the old shed. In the past decade, Michael has avoided driving in this neighborhood, down this street, and found any way to not come into contact with Jesse Manes by any means necessary. He didn’t expect the man to snap the same way again, but it had felt safer to stay out of his sight, to not give him a reason to lash out again, and potentially put Alex in danger.

He’s never actually been inside the Manes family home. Back in high school, when Alex had offered up the shed, Michael had parked his truck in the alley, hadn’t wanted to give anyone a reason to suspect he was trespassing, or to call the cops. All he’d wanted to do was take Alex up on his offer of somewhere to stay instead of sleeping in his truck.

Standing outside the door to the shed, he realizes the entire place feels smaller than he remembers. And maybe that’s his memory playing tricks on him, maybe the details have gone a bit fuzzy over the past decade. He’d been surprised when Alex had asked him to meet him here, had sent the address and directions, as though Michael wouldn’t remember after all these years. But as to the reason why Alex wanted him to come, Michael has no idea.

Pushing open the door, Michael finds Alex inside, standing in the middle of the room, his gaze fixed on a pair of posters hanging on the wall, relics from childhood. The shed isn’t as tidy, there’s more cobwebs on the walls and dirt on the floor than Michael remembers. There’s still a cot pushed up against the wall, and Michael tries to not let his own gaze linger on the work table where Jesse Manes had held his hand down before slamming the hammer into it.

“You came.”

Michael shrugs. “You asked me to.”

"Greg and I are going to sell the house. Neither of us want the reminder, especially now that he's gone." Alex pauses, shaking his head, but still not turning around. "I can handle some new family moving in, making it into a home. But this - let whoever buys the house build a different shed."

"Okay," Michael replies.

He watches Alex look around, taking in the shed around them, shaking his head. He wonders if Alex is thinking of those two boys they were at seventeen, happy and in love, planning to spend the rest of their lives together.

“I was such a naïve kid, thinking I could carve out one place for myself that he wouldn’t be able to touch.” He watches, helplessly, as Alex runs a hand over the work table, pausing at a spot near the left corner. Michael doesn’t feel brave enough to see if there’s a blood stain left on the wood. "This place has haunted me ever since, because it should have been a beginning."

"For us?"

They've never talked about what they'd each had planned for afterwards. Michael knew Alex wanted to become a musician, go to school for music, get out of Roswell as quickly as possible. And Alex had known his plans for college, and his full ride to UNM for agricultural engineering. But they'd never talked about their future - together. 

Maybe that was one of their other many mistakes of the last ten years. 

"For me, for you - for us." Alex glances around, his face angry, the furrow in his brow pronounced. "I just - I want this place _gone_."

There’s tools everywhere, an axe, a sledgehammer, shovels. A hammer. They could rip the shed down themselves, tear it apart piece by piece. He doesn’t feel particularly violent at that moment, but the prospect of destroying the physical reminder of the terror Alex had faced growing up feels cathartic. 

Michael picks up the hammer that is sitting on the workbench to the right of where Alex is standing, and holds it out to him.

"Let's do it then."

They rip, smash, and destroy everything in the shed, including the walls and windows. Eventually, Michael picks up the sledgehammer and slams it into the framework of the structure, and watches as Alex looks up, eyeing the roof for a moment before stepping out of the fall zone.

By the time they're done, the shed is nothing more than a pile of rubble sitting on its concrete slab foundation. He and Alex sit against the fence, admiring their handiwork, and Michael finds himself wishing for either booze or acetone just to celebrate - preferably booze so Alex could drink as well.

"That felt good," Alex laughs, sounding lighter than Michael has ever heard him before.

Distracted by the view of the sun setting on the horizon, Michael doesn't see but feels Alex slip his hand into his own, pushing their fingers to slide together. He tears his eyes away from one view, trading it for a different, better one before he feels it.

_Alex._

It's happiness, and it's relief, and Michael feels himself melt into the connection, and the presence of Alex reaching through the bond to him. And Alex is staring at him, smiling, and everything Michael can feel passing through the bond is reflected back on Alex's face in the moment.

Michael wants to kiss him. 

Immediately, Alex ducks his head, and belatedly Michael realizes Alex felt that urge pass through him, and through the bond. He laughs, smiling at the thought, but keeps his head turned towards Alex unable to look away.

A moment later, Alex is pushing forward, and Michael first feels the fingers of his free hand dance across the skin of his neck, carefully pulling him in, before Alex is pressing their lips together. And it's everything Michael remembers, even if it's been months since the last time he's kissed Alex. He melts into it as Alex's hand moves into his hair, fingers combing through his curls, and Alex puts just a little more force into the kiss, despite the awkward angle, before pulling back just enough so only their foreheads are still touching.

The soulmate bond stays open between them, and Michael feels himself reaching out for Alex through it, and now, Alex is reaching out to him and Michael can feel it. He's overtaken by the thought and feeling of _home_ as the chaos inside him settles, as if Alex is soothing it for him.

He feels dazzled, shocked, and in love.

But most importantly, it feels right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> This past week kicked my ass, but I'm looking to have chapter four up no later than Wednesday. <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have returned with a new chapter! Sorry sorry for making everyone wait, I did not plan on this. Basically just lots of pining in this chapter, but I promise actual Malex in the next one!
> 
> As always, thank you to Riley for reading this over before I release it to the masses. <3

He's straightening up the carport, sorting through and seeing what's useful and what's actually junk, when Maria's very recognizable red Chevy truck pulls into the yard. Michael loves her truck - it's the same model as his own, but in far better condition. Then again, Maria didn't ever have to rebuild the entire engine from scraps or live out of hers, so no wonder it's in near perfect shape.

"Guerin!"

She sounds… annoyed.

"Yes, DeLuca?" He asks as he tosses an empty beer bottle in the direction of the trash, listening to it bang against the metal.

"You got a minute?"

He could say no, but Maria knows him better than that. She knows how it works here at the junkyard, she's familiar with his lax schedule, and she's smart enough to deduce that because there are currently no cars that need to be worked on, he most definitely _has a minute_.

"I told you how Alex and Kyle were looking into this while _I might be an alien_ thing, right?" He moves to acknowledge her question, but she continues speaking, ignoring him. "I was wondering - last year, you and Max went to that faith healer in Texas. But Liz told me that Max can heal people, like it's his alien superpower. So why did you need to go to a bogus faith healer in Texas if you knew Max could just fix your hand?"

She really is too smart for her own good, he thinks.

"You're right," he agrees, spinning around and leaning against the work table. "We weren't actually there for that hack to heal me."

"So why were you there?"

Michael holds out his right arm, the one with the tattoo of the beacon symbol that he'd gotten when they knew Max would be okay. "Because of this."

He waits until she's standing next to him, fingers stroking the skin near the tattoo, staring at his arm and taking it in.

"Max found a flyer that used this symbol. And all we know is it's somehow related to us."

"I thought you said you don't remember anything?"

Michael scoffs at her question - it’s not that he doesn’t want to talk about this, but he’d rather stick to what they know. And the less he thinks about the story of how’d he drawn the symbol all over the walls of the group home, the better. She only knows some basics about his time living with the bad foster families of New Mexico, just the things he’s said in passing as part of other conversations, and he’d rather keep it that way. No one wants to hear about his childhood.

"There's a couple things," he replies, hoping she won't push. "Nothing that really helped us understand though."

It seems to satisfy her enough as she nods and glances around the junkyard before she turns back to face him, nodding at his arm. "But did you or Max ever find out why they used it?" 

"Just that there had been a woman on their reservation who would draw it."

"And you never looked into that further?"

He stares at her, confused by the question. "She died almost thirty years ago, what's there to look into?"

Maria laughs, and Michael narrows his eyes at her - what was he missing here? A dead woman couldn't tell them anything.

"Men really are _helpless_." He watches as she pulls her cell phone out of her back pocket and stares tapping away at the screen for a moment before looking back up at him. "Even if that woman passed away, people - _someone_ on the reservation must have known her. Spoken to her. Not everyone lives in their own little bubble of isolation, Guerin.”

"Hey-"

Maria's phone chimes with a new alert, and she checks the screen, smiling at whatever it is, typing out something else, and sliding the phone back into her pocket.

"So then I do have another question," she begins, nodding toward him again. "About your hand."

Of course she does. He'd told her bare minimums surrounding it, but not much detail. He still hadn't been in a place to want to address it when she'd asked. She hadn't pushed, so he'd assumed she'd gotten the story from Alex, and that was that.

"You broke it when we were kids - right around graduation, right?" He nods, wondering where she's going with this, and why it matters in the context of the beacon symbol. "Why didn't you just have Max heal it then? Why wait all that time? No offense, Guerin, but it never looked like it set properly after - however you broke it. Wasn't that painful?"

This is much more than he ever wants to talk about, hell, he hasn't even been having full discussions with _Alex_ about this, and Alex had been there. 

"Not going to heal something someone could notice shouldn't be."

"If it was a bar fight, I assure you, no one-"

"It wasn't. And it also wasn't an accident here in the junkyard." He thinks of all the excuses he'd given Max and Isobel afterwards to avoid talking about it, and remembers the way he'd snapped at Max that night they'd been locked in the bunker together, the way Max had finally pissed him off badly enough that the truth had come spilling out. He’s not going to do that to Maria though. "So yeah, someone would have noticed, and it would have risked us being found out. And I couldn’t put Max and Isobel through that."

"And now? I mean, people would notice after ten years that your hand was magically fixed. _I_ noticed."

He shrugs his shoulders, glancing down at his left hand, flexing the fingers. It doesn't really matter now, that _someone_ is dead. And hopefully with him, any targets that had been on Michael’s back.

“These days it feels a little less like we’re being hunted because of who we are.”

Maria stares at him, as if the gears in her brain are working on what could have possibly changed recently. He lets her work out the puzzle because he knows she’s smart, he knows she is familiar with Alex’s family. But what he doesn’t know, he realizes, is how much she knows about what Alex’s father did.

“Because-” she stops, eyes going just a fraction wider. “Because he’s dead, right?”

Michael nods, so she at least knows it’s the correct answer. But he really hopes she drops it, it’s not something he particularly wants to talk about.

“I did talk to Alex,” she continues instead. “After the other day, when you were at the bar moping.”

Of course she did, that doesn’t surprise him in the least. He’d known even opening up to her there was a chance whatever he’d said would get back to Alex somehow. And opening up to Maria was easier for some reason, like the risk was less. He enjoyed talking to her, spending time with her. And the more he did, the more he understood the relationship between her and Alex.

“He keeps this wall up, even with me. It’s why everything between us got screwed up - he didn’t tell me it was you, and I couldn’t-” she pauses, pulling her lip in. “We’re getting better, I think he’s trying to keep less secrets these days.”

“He talked about us?”

It’s not that it should be improbable, not when he knows Maria is aware they have a past, one that Greg and Kyle also knew about without having to be told. But for so long, he’s just existed believing that no one knew, that no one would understand or even want to hear about his own curiosity regarding the soulmark. Or his questions about why it didn’t seem to function the same way Liz and Max’s did. So he hadn’t asked, just believed that there had been something fundamentally wrong with him instead.

“Did you think I was lying the other day, when I told you he cares about you?”

Michael shakes his head.

“Okay then,” she continues, reaching out with her right hand and rubbing her fingers against the soulmark on the inside of her wrist. “Because I didn’t quite understand it all before this showed up. Everything I knew was from Liz, but now that I have this, that I know exactly what it feels like - I just can’t imagine ignoring it. Or silencing it. That ability to always be connected to Jenna, or to Greg, I don’t ever want to be without it now.”

“I wasn’t the one doing that, DeLuca.”

“But you need to understand where Alex is coming from. Why he would make that decision.”

Michael realizes she’s talking about the shed, and the decisions Alex had made in its wake - muting the bond, and joining the Air Force.

“He blamed himself for my hand.” He raises it up in the air, flexing the fingers. “That if we hadn’t been together, it never would have happened.”

“For ten years, Guerin?” He doesn’t know what to say, and instead of letting the silence stretch on, Maria pushes forward, her eyes wide as she stares at him. “Both of you can be stubborn, but you deserve to be happy too.”

Is this what it feels like when you start to let people in? They start to understand those parts of you that sometimes you don’t even understand - or want to understand - about yourself? Michael isn’t a fan of it, doesn’t like his demons being laid out so easily. But Maria seems to have this innate ability to see through him, and understand him, to say just what he needs to hear.

"Are you?" He asks instead, needing to shift the focus of this discussion a bit. 

Maria smiles, and Michael remembers why he thought he could love her the way he loves Alex. "This showing up didn't mean happiness is automatic. But it felt like _something_." 

She sounds happy though, perhaps even more so than when they'd dated.

“Did you stop by to give me the most round about dating advice, DeLuca?”

“No,” she immediately replies, turning and heading back toward her truck. “But I got what I came for. Thanks, Guerin.”

For a moment, he just stands there, watching her cross the junkyard, before finding his voice again.

“Maria!” He calls out, watching as she stops as she reaches the driver side door, fingers wrapped around the handle. “That’s it?”

“I’m just trying to piece together a puzzle. I’ll let you know what I find.”

Michael doesn’t quite know what she’s talking about, or what his hand and the woman from the reservation who died has to do with anything, but he’s curious to find out now.

\--------

Observing first that Liz’s car isn’t parked outside, Michael feels better about visiting Max. However, Isobel’s car is, and for a moment Michael doesn’t know if he feels like getting it from both sides today. He thinks of everything Isobel had said about Noah, and considers that maybe it’ll be good to hear her thoughts on Alex’s decisions regarding the bond as well. It still feels weird, this newfound camaraderie between him and Max ever since Max's resurrection, and though he's loathe to admit it out loud, he misses the easy friendship they had when they were kids - even when Michael was still holding everyone at arm's length. He wants to believe he's learning now, finally understanding what family is, and that maybe he's had one here all along. It might not be the one he was looking for, but that didn't make it any less important.

And he owes Max a huge debt of gratitude for having his back regarding Alex, even when he was storming into places he shouldn’t have.

"Michael!" Max greets him as he opens the door. "You know, Isobel doesn't knock, so I don't know why you are."

Of course she doesn't, he thinks. She regularly barges unannounced into the Airstream as well.

“I heard that!” Isobel shouts from inside.

One of Michael's favorite things about Max's house are the bookshelves. He may tease Max relentlessly about his reading preferences, and his love of every pretentious literary novel on the planet, but Michael is also kinda jealous of the collection as well. The shelves had been a project they'd worked on together after Max bought the house; Isobel trying to get them to hang out and reconcile over a problem they were keeping her in the dark about.

They sit around the fire pit, Max propping open the glass doors, and handing Michael a beer from the fridge.

"Everything okay?"

Michael nods, taking a sip of his drink. He has a reason for stopping by, for wanting to talk to Max. Maria's visit to the junkyard is still fresh in his mind, and he's been preoccupied thinking about what she'd been asking about.

"What did you think, when your soulmark first showed up?"

He knows they've talked about it, but that was years ago, when it had been nothing more than fascination and wonder. They'd been too young at the time to grasp the full implications, and back then Michael had been such an angry kid he'd sworn that he never wanted a soulmate, because humanity had already shown it didn't care about him, why would one little mark on his skin make a difference.

Max regards him for a moment, perhaps thinking of those days when they were younger, before answering. "Mine showed up so early, I just always remember having it."

"Yeah, I remember coming back here, and you just showing it off like it was no big deal. Thought you were gonna get us killed."

Max laughs, taking a pull from his drink. "You were such an angry kid, but you were still so protective of us."

"We were all each other had. Someone had to watch and make sure you didn't do something stupid."

“Plus, it’s not like I couldn’t have gone into people’s minds and made them forget,” Isobel helpfully adds, kicking her foot out at him. “So when did your soulmark show up? You’ve never said.”

“Uh, the day Rosa died.”

Neither Max or Isobel say anything for a spell and Michael wonders what’s going on in their heads, what they’re thinking about. If it's about all the events that happened that day that they know about already, and adding this to the list.

All he hopes is they’re not having one of their silent telepathic conversations while he’s sitting right here next to them.

He wants to hate that day so badly, but no matter how hard he’s tried, he can’t. Because it means hating the good parts, it means shunning those good moments with Alex - from kissing him at the UFO Emporium to the quiet moments in the shed when it had just been the two of them.

“I’m sorry, Michael.”

He shakes his head. “Nothing to be sorry for. It was a long time ago.”

“But the mark showing up, it shouldn’t be - you should have been able to enjoy it.”

Nothing he can do about that now. And the day was ruined long before he’d received Isobel’s call for help.

She leans forward, grabbing his hand. “And Alex still left that summer?”

He nods. “He blamed himself for my hand. For everything that happened afterward. He thought that it would be better for me if he left.”

“Well that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Isobel replies, letting go of his hand and leaning back in her chair.

Max is staring at him as if he’s trying to understand something. “Is that why you decided to date Maria?”

“Really, Max?”

If anyone was going to understand why he’d tried to date someone who wasn’t his soulmate, it was going to be Max. He’d tried to date Jenna Cameron back in those early days when Liz had first gotten back to town, thinking he too could ignore the soulmark. Michael knows though, that it was still different for him. Max and Liz had never tried to cut off their bond with each other - at least not that he knew of. Max was practically an open book, surely he and Isobel would have known if Liz had been doing what Alex had done in muting the bond.

It probably would have turned Max even more maudlin than he’d been in those days.

“But you and DeLuca broke up,” Isobel adds, unhelpfully. “She’s dating Jenna Cameron now.”

“It’s not that simple, Iz.”

He watches her glance between him and Max, and he can tell she is just exasperated by the two of them.

“See this? Your nonsense with Liz,” Isobel says glancing at Max before turning back to Michael. “And this _whatever_ that is going on with Alex, is exactly why I don’t want one of those things now.”

Max laughs, shaking his head. “They’re not all bad, Isobel. They’re comforting too at times, having that person that is always there when you need them, especially when you can’t be together physically.”

“I had a serial killer controlling me since I was fourteen.” Isobel snaps, her tone clipped. “At the moment, I don’t want anything with anyone that can influence me. Knowing I’m alone inside my head is actually comforting.”

Michael leans back in his seat, and thinks about Isobel’s words. Even if Alex had cut off the bond from his end, in a way he’d still been controlling it, the lack of a two way connection had still had a major impact on their relationship. It hurt something deep inside him to even _think_ of comparing Alex to Noah in any way, but he’d always thought that the bond should be something equal between soulmates, especially when they’d been kids and Max had been waxing poetic about Liz day in and day out. Knowing from his conversation with Liz that she felt the same way only helped solidify his belief that the soulmarks were an equalizer, something to bring two people closer together.

So why did it feel like it did the opposite for him and Alex?

He must zone out, because Max and Isobel are staring at him when he finally glances back over in their direction.

“You okay?”

“Uh, yeah,” he answers, his mind still stuck on the _controlling_ aspect of what Isobel had said. “Why do you think we even have these soulmarks? And the soulbond?”

“Like a purpose?”

Michael nods.

“It’s always felt like it’s about finding - it’s why Roswell has always felt like home to me, because Liz was here.” Max smiles as he speaks, and Michael can’t help but chuckle and shake his head, wondering if they’re going to have to listen to Max get super romantic on them now. “The only reason I didn’t take off after her that summer was because of you two.”

 _Home_.

“What about you and Alex?”

He doesn’t answer right away, instead feels through the bond, reaching out and seeing if Alex was keeping the connection open or if he’d closed it off again. It’s hit or miss, and Michael tries to not let his frustration seep through. Even if he doesn’t want to keep things from Alex, it still hurts to think about how much Alex has kept from him.

He’s saved by a familiar blue SUV driving towards them, up the long winding gravel path that serves as Max's driveway. He raises an eyebrow in Max's direction, but doesn't move yet.

"You give her a house key?"

Max laughs. "She's had one for months. My bigger issue is getting Isobel to return hers."

"Good luck with that,” Michael teases, winking at Isobel who is laughing along with them.

“It’s my key! Why should I return it? Someone should have the spare.”

They watch as Liz parks next to Max's Jeep, waving as she walks towards them, a messenger bag on her shoulder.

"Mikey!"

"Ortecho, when are you gonna stop with that?"

"Let's see," she replies, pausing dramatically to lean down and give Max a kiss. "Never. It's a great nickname."

He groans at the idea of being referred to as _Mikey_ , but at least no one is walking around calling him _Mike_.

"So what did I interrupt?"

"We were discussing soulmarks."

Liz drops into one of the empty chairs, setting her bag on the ground, and looking curious. "You mean like Maria's? Did she talk to you about-"

Michael nods. "She stopped by the junkyard."

"Apparently Greg’s heard stories about a similar woman from elders on the reservation where he lives.”

"You think it's the same?" Michael asks, because that'd be a lucky coincidence to find someone who knew her.

"I think it's likely, and there's no harm in going to talk to someone who may have known her."

"Hold on," Max interrupts, holding up his hands. "Are you talking about the old woman I learned about in Texas?"

Liz laughs, reaching over and taking Max’s hand, and Michael finds he doesn’t hate seeing the two of them happy like this - seeing Max happy. “Keep up, babe.”

“What old woman?”

Isobel’s questions makes Michael realize he and Max have never truly filled her in on everything that happened during those months she’d been in stasis, especially what happened in Texas. At the time, it’d probably been because it’d felt like they’d learned nothing, but Michael is reconsidering that view after the earlier conversation with Maria.

“While you were in the pod, when we were trying to develop the antidote, we found someone who purported to be able to heal with their right hand.”

Isobel glares at Max first, and then to him, and Michael wonders if they’re about to get yelled at for not telling her.

“But,” Max continues, hands raised in defense. “She was a fraud. All she was able to tell us was that there had been an old woman on the reservation where she’d grown up who could make that symbol like my tattoo out of anything.”

“And you just didn’t think this was important?”

Michael feels himself shrink in his seat.

“Maria and Jenna are driving out tomorrow, I’m sure you could join them, Isobel,” Liz replies, ignoring Isobel’s question, and saving them from a further beating. “And anyone else who wants to tag along.”

He shakes his head. He's got too much work to try and catch up on at the junkyard, not that Sanders will really care if he fucks off for the day. But spending the day listening to Maria and Isobel argue while stuck in a car is not his idea of a fun time.

\--------

After the conversations with Maria and Max, Michael lets his mind drift back to the console in the bunker. He drives back from Max's house thinking about how it had reacted when he'd attached the last piece, the way it had lit up and called out to him. He lets his thoughts about it bounce around inside him until the next day. It feels like he's running on autopilot as he works, barely acknowledging anyone who stops in besides a perfunctory greeting. He’s pretty sure Sanders yells at him a dozen times to stop daydreaming.

It feels as though they're getting closer to finding some answers and yet still miles away from truly understanding why their ship was traveling here, or why it crashed. Even a stowaway from a war torn planet would have a reason for their actions, no matter how illogical they are. What would possess someone to crash a ship knowing there were women and children on board? Were these soulmarks connected to why they're here? It's too many questions and not nearly enough answers, and no way to get them either. Caulfield had perhaps housed some of the last known survivors who would have been capable of filling in the blanks and instead-

Michael tries not to think about finding his mother, about cracking the glass to the door of her cell, and the piercing screech of the alarm that immediately followed. He tries to not think about how she'd spent those precious few moments, those last minutes of her life, showing him just how loved he was.

It hadn’t been lost on him how she had recognized the importance of who Alex was to him, how in those last minutes she’d sent him feelings of love and understanding, as well as relief that he was alive, that he’d survived, and that he’d somehow managed to find her at all. But in the aftermath of losing her, of realizing his own actions had caused her death, and mourning the family he’d spent his entire life on Earth searching for, he hadn’t been able to focus on any of that. Especially because he, and Alex, were able to escape. That they were still alive. All because of Alex’s stubborn refusal to _leave_ \- and it was his mother that was now gone forever.

There are schematics spread out across the light table in the center of the room, designs that Michael has been working on since high school to perfect. The burnt piece of paper he'd picked up at the Long Farm is taped to the draft of an escape pod Michael believes his mother had been designing.

Which made him wonder - where had she planned to take them? Had she really believed she could build a whole new ship while the Air Force was still hunting her?

He presses a finger to the console, hoping for the same reaction as before, but it only shimmers with it's usual iridescence in response, frustrating Michael. The idea of smashing it back into pieces and re-assembling it crosses his mind, which he files away for later. His anger right now isn't going to lead anywhere good.

Next, he tries the sequence that had illuminated on the console the last time, traces a fingertip over one of the symbols and waits - watching as it finally lights up again. As it fades, a second symbol follows, and Michael hurries to follow, pressing his finger to each of them in order, watching as the beacon symbol reappears in the middle, same as before.

This time though, he doesn't see his mother. This time he's staring at an unrecognizable map of the stars, like nothing he's researched before. Symbols from the console appear over different stars, and Michael reaches out, picking one at random to see what happens - he still doesn’t know what they mean, and wonders if he ever will. A trajectory is then plotted out in front of him before disappearing, and Michael feels a sense of excitement that his hypothesis of this being a navigation system appears to have been correct.

But he’s spent years, practically his entire life studying star charts, and nothing he’s seeing looks familiar. Uncharted galaxies and unknown stars light up around him, as different pathways illuminate, a light bouncing from one star to the next, creating patterns in front of him. He reaches out to touch one, and watches as everything around him disappears.

Suddenly, he’s back in his bunker, standing in front of the console, his hand hovering just inches above it. And all he can think about is Alex. First he feels for the bond, to see if Alex had reached out to him, but he finds it no different than it’s been lately - the passing emotions of Alex as he goes about his day. Of course his prodding at the bond alerts Alex, and suddenly there’s a spike of concern enveloping him, and Michael pulls back, trying to assure Alex that he’s fine.

Except that’s not entirely true. Something had to have happened, because Micheal hadn’t been thinking of Alex at all when he’d touched the console - had he?

No, he’d been thinking about his mother. About losing her. About Caulfield and how it had been his fault the explosions were triggered.

Michael climbs up the ladder and out into the evening sunlight, collapsing on the wooden slab and absentmindedly pulling the Airstream back into place over the manhole cover leading down to the bunker. He lays on his back and stares up at the sky, trying to breath, to stop flooding the bond with his emotions, but his mind won’t stop spinning, the chaos overtaking him.

He thinks about the first time he saw Alex - across a hallway at school when they were kids, some time after he’d returned to Roswell. Back then Alex had still been friends with Kyle Valenti, who hadn’t yet turned into a Grade A douchebag. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about it too hard, but there had definitely been a skip in his heartbeat that day as he’d noticed Alex, a curiosity surrounding this boy he’d never met.

So many moments between then and senior year, when Michael had finally decided, in those weeks before graduation, to finally do something about the butterflies in his stomach and the way his heart felt like it beat just a little bit faster every time he saw Alex. So many times he wanted to step in, help Alex when he was being picked on by Kyle Valenti - but there were rules. Don’t draw attention to yourself. And picking a fight with Kyle Valenti was the fastest and worst way to get noticed. Stealing Alex’s guitar out of the music room had been easier, it was a way to almost guarantee he’d get Alex alone - even if it was just for Alex to yell at him. He just needed an excuse for them to speak at least once, and then maybe Michael could figure out why he couldn’t stop thinking about this boy with the spiky black hair, and the painted black nails and the black eyeliner. 

But that encounter, Alex ripping the guitar out of his hands, hadn’t eased his confusion at all.

Through the bond, he feels Alex, but he’s distracted. The bond is open, but something has Alex’s entire attention that Michael realizes he isn’t responding to the gently prodding. It’s not that he thinks there’s anything to worry about, he’s now more than familiar with how Alex uses to bond, or what it would feel like if Alex was in danger. 

No, this is different. 

He pulls his cell phone out of his pocket, and types out a new text message, before letting the piece of technology fall forward onto his chest.

 **To Alex:** Everything okay?

It takes a moment for the phone to chirp from where he’d dropped it, but Michael immediately picks it up, staring at the words on the screen.

 **From Alex:** Talking with Maria.

Michael belatedly remembers the trip to the reservation that he’d declined to involve himself in - had she discovered something? Isobel and Jenna had been with her though for the trip, so she hadn’t been alone.

 **From Alex:** Meet me at home?

He stares at the text, at the word _home_ , wondering if he’s hallucinating. It’s not his home, it’s Alex’s house. Michael’s just been a visitor, always a visitor. Sure, he’d made himself comfortable during the days they’d been searching, immersing himself into Alex’s space, living in the house while they tried to gather an idea of what had happened. But Michael had immediately vacated the moment they’d found Alex, given him his space back as though he’d never been there at all. 

And even know, with Alex’s open invitation that he was always welcome - that didn’t make his house a home. 

Even if there was a tiny voice in the back of his mind reminding him, he wanted it to be.

 **To Alex:** On my way.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The whole gang starts piecing things together; Michael & Alex talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised Malex talking, and here it is! <3

(Summer 2010)

_Alex hates how short his regulation haircut is. He misses being able to style it. He misses his septum piercing and the earring he used to wear in his left ear. He misses his rings and bracelets, and painting his fingernails black._

_But he doesn't hate the tools the Air Force has given him. Things he knows now that can help him one day get one up on his father, to never be that scared seventeen year old boy ever again._

_He’s halfway to the junkyard, having borrowed Maria’s truck because he’s only in Roswell for a couple more days before he deploys back out to the Middle East, when Alex realizes he’s wearing one of his Air Force hoodies. He knows Michael hates it - it’s not something they’ve ever explicitly discussed, but he can’t help but think of the way Michael had looked at him when he’d announced he’d enlisted. The disappointment and anger that had flared through the bond matching the sadness in Michael’s eyes._

_He knocks on the Airstream door._

_It flies open, and Michael looks like the best thing Alex has seen in months. His curls are wild, longer than Alex has ever seen before. He's wearing a plain t-shirt, a pair of grease stained jeans, and he's barefoot and all Alex can think is how beautiful and perfect Michael Guerin is. How much he wants to get his hands on him, feel Michael’s skin beneath him, against him._

_"Hi," Alex manages to say, because he can't think of anything else._

_"You're here."_

_And Alex can’t focus on the surprise in Michael’s voice, the overwhelming flood of happiness that slams into him through the bond, as though he’d never expected Alex to come back again. He answers by pushing Michael inside and up against the cabinetry, slipping his hands under the shirt, and letting his fingertips run over the skin of Michael's abdomen. Alex doesn't waste a moment before he's pressing their mouths together, practically growling at the contact that he's been fantasizing about for months. Kissing Michael is better than he remembers, the dreams he’s had of this moment for the past year not holding a candle to the real thing - he even smells better, Alex inhaling the faint scent of petrichor that always seems to be present around Michael._

_Michael's hands stay on Alex's hips, like he's too shocked to move, and the thought just makes Alex press into Michael harder, biting at his bottom lip and sliding his hands to undo the ridiculous belt buckle Michael is wearing._

_He pulls away from Michael's lips long enough to pull his t-shirt off, before Alex is spinning Michael around so he's facing the cabinet._

_He pauses for a moment at the sight of Michael's back, at seeing the mark - the two black lines that make it up inked into the skin of Michael's upper left shoulder, a mirror image to the ones Alex knows are on his own back. Without thinking about it, he lifts his left hand up, letting his fingertips run over the skin near it, but not quite touching it._

_"Admiring it?"_

_"Just," Alex starts, pausing his movements, causing Michael to try and twist around to look at him. "Sometimes it doesn't feel real."_

_“Don’t see the big fuss, since it doesn’t seem like anything more than a tattoo.”_

_Alex freezes, because he wants to correct Michael, tell him that’s not the truth at all. But they’ve only got tonight together, and he’d rather actually spend it with Michael than cutting this reunion short by admitting the truth about the soulmarks and their connection. Especially since he doesn’t know when he’s going to be back in Roswell again._

_Maybe later. Maybe afterwards, he’ll tell him._

_Maybe someday in the future._

_Lost in his thoughts and the feel of Michael pressed against him, Alex almost misses Michael holding out a plastic bottle toward him - lube._

_“Yeah?” Alex asks, running his hand down along the curve of Michael’s spine._

_“We have the night, right?”_

_Something breaks inside him at hearing Michael correctly assume that he’s leaving again, but the bond can’t give it away, and all Alex can feel is how much Michael wants him in the moment, how much he’s missed him over the years._

_Letting Michael’s emotions settle into the bond, Alex turns him around, fingers digging into his hips, hands slipping around his back to pull their bodies closer. Even if they do just have this one night together, maybe it can be a good one. Maybe it’ll make the next couple months he’s stationed in the middle of the desert on the other side of the world easier._

_Michael’s fingers dance along the nape of his neck, and it takes Alex a moment to realize he’s reaching for hair where there no longer is any._

_Somehow they make it to the tiny bed, Alex pushing Michael down onto the sheets that look like they need to be burned immediately. They don’t waste another moment then, jeans and boxers kicked off, landing in various places along the floor, and Alex is straddling Michael, desperate to feel him. Because if this is the last time he’s going to see Michael Guerin for months, the last time they’re going to physically touch, Alex wants to remember it._

_“I want to feel you,” Alex whispers, leaning down, their foreheads pressed together._

_He lets Michael work him open, lube dripping from his fingertips, and Alex falls forward at the feeling, of wanting more, lips sealing around the skin of Michael’s shoulder, arms wrapped around him to keep them pressed tightly together. There’s nothing except Michael’s want coming through the bond, and Alex finds himself letting it engulf him as his own need begins to pool low in his belly._

_“Michael-” he gasps, leaning back and taking Michael’s face in his hands, watching out of the corner of his eye as Michael takes himself in hand, spreading more lube around, and Alex shifts, pushing his body up to line himself up._

_“Yeah,” Michael groans as Alex’s hands slide down to his shoulders, fingers digging into the skin of his shoulders, and he slowly lowers himself downward._

_Alex has never had words to describe how Michael Guerin makes him feel. Sometimes he thinks it’s because of the soulbond, perhaps amplifying the feelings. Other times, particularly when Michael is looking at him, or touching him, Alex wonders if it’s more than just the bond, if perhaps Michael could feel the same way about him. He knows, from what he’s felt through the bond, that Michael likes him, being with him. But what he can’t understand is why - there’s nothing good about him that Michael should want to be with him._

_After all, it was Alex who got his hand ruined. It was Alex who was responsible for Michael not going to UNM. Maybe the soulmarks are wrong, maybe this is all they’re allowed to have._

_Michael grabs his hips, stilling his movements, pulling Alex out of his thoughts, he waits as Michael searches, looking for something in his facial features. He must find it after a moment, because Michael is wrapping an arm around him, flipping them around, and sliding back into him, this time hovering over him, and Alex doesn’t hesitate before wrapping his legs around Michael’s back, locking his ankles together, urging Michael forward._

_“Patience,” Michael laughs, leaning forward to kiss him, and Alex wonders if this is what it should feel like to be loved. “Don't we have all night?”_

_“We do,” Alex grunts, trying to push Michael forward again._

_After, as they fall asleep, Alex buries himself into Michael’s side, and allows himself to think what it would be like if things were different. If these stolen moments when he is back in Roswell aren’t the only times they get to be together. If his father had never found them in the shed together, and had never ruined Michael’s hand._

_He wakes slowly to the feeling of a fingertip tracing the lines of his soulmark over and over again, and peaks his eyes open to see Michael focused on it unaware he’s woken up. But the bond is full of Michael’s emotions, pushing through the connection, and there’s so much of it, Alex has to close his eyes and refocus on everything that’s coming at him from Michael._

_Sadness. Regret. Anger._

_Was Michael regretting everything they’d done together? Angry that Alex had shown up like this?_

_He can’t ask, can’t bear that he’s right in how he’s interpreting Michael’s emotions through the bond. And there’s so much of it, Alex wonders if perhaps he had made the right decision all those years ago in blocking the bond. That maybe that initial happiness he’d felt was fleeting and temporary. Maybe this is all they’ll ever be - just crashing back together in stolen moments._

_It's better this way. It means Michael isn't attached to him. It means he can move on, be happy._

_In the morning just as the sun is starting to rise, Alex slips out from underneath Michael’s arm, pressing one last kiss to his lips, hoping that he doesn’t wake up. Alex knows he can’t handle a good-bye, and it’s better this way. For both of them._

\--------

Michael doesn’t recognize the sedan parked in the driveway next to Alex’s SUV, but process of elimination tells him it probably belongs to Jenna Cameron. Kyle Valenti’s rich boy BMW is parked on the road, as to not block the cars in the driveway, and Michael wonders what’s going on that the whole gang is apparently being called to Alex’s house. He parks his truck behind Kyle’s SUV, and just as his foot hits the concrete of Alex’s driveway, gravel crunches on the road behind him, indicating another vehicle, and Michael turns around to see Max’s Jeep pulling in behind his truck.

“The entire Scooby Gang is here,” Michael laughs as Max, Liz, and Rosa walk toward him. He hadn’t expected to see Rosa slide out of the backseat - whatever Maria found on the reservation must be pretty important.

Inside, everyone is in the living room - Alex is sitting on the coffee table, facing Maria, who is flanked on both sides by Jenna and Kyle. Michael stands in the hallway for a moment, watching as Kyle stands up, and Rosa immediately slides into her place, wrapping her arms around Maria. Liz follows, dropping onto the table next to Alex, and Michael watches as she takes Maria’s hand in one of her own, Alex’s in the other.

Isobel is perched on top of the counter in the kitchen, cell phone in hand, lost in concentration. 

“So?” Michael asks, trying to break whatever weird tension is permeating the room. “How was the road trip?”

Behind him, Isobel scoffs, and he turns just as she’s sliding down off the countertop, her feet barely making a noise as they hit the wood floor. “We found out quite a bit today, including that Maria DeLuca and I are related.”

“Related?” Max asks, leaning against the back of the armchair in the middle of the room, glancing between the two of them. “How?”

"The usual way," she snaps back by way of reply, before Michael can see her shoulders deflate. "Her grandmother was my half-sister."

He watches as Maria takes her necklace off, the one that she wears less and less these days despite the insistence from Mimi that she keep it on. “Greg introduced us to a guy named Harrison, who had known Louise - he recognized this too. Said Louise had asked him to have it made.”

Liz shakes her head, reaching out and taking the necklace. “Did he know anything about the flower inside? Where it came from?”

“No,” Maria replies, looking around the room. “She had given him the flower, and just requested the inscription on the back.” 

Michael leans closer as Maria flips the necklace around, and watching as she runs a finger over the lines that he’s always known were there. But looking at it now, he realizes it’s more than just a design or stamp - it’s a soulmark. But it doesn’t appear to be an exact copy of the one on Maria’s wrist either - it’s something else.

“All he knew was that Louise wanted my grandmother Patty to have it, to know that it came from her biological mother, and that it would protect her.” Maria pauses her finger over the soulmark, and watches as she moves to trace over the one on the inside of her wrist. "Louise told Harrison this was so Patty would know she had a family. Three points - one for her, one for her other daughter and Patty's half-sister, and one for Roy Bronson."

Michael's head shoots up at the mention of the foreman from the Long Farm. It'd been reported that he'd died in the fire that night by the local paper, and Forrest Long had included family gossip about how he'd been suspected of hiding Nazi spies - but it had never crossed his mind that Roy Bronson could have been romantically involved with Louise, or the possibility he was a relative of Maria's.

"A soulmark?" Liz asks, reaching out to take the necklace. 

"It looks like one," Alex agrees, his gaze clearly on the necklace as Liz holds it out between them. "It resembles yours, Maria."

"Could she have just designed it herself?" Rosa asks, pulling a sketchbook out of the bookbag she'd brought with her, dropping it on her lap and continues rummaging inside.

"Design like, make her own?" Kyle asks, glancing around, his brow furrowed. "Is that even possible?"

Rosa laughs from her seat, now flipping through the pages of her sketchbook, searching. "Why not? It's just another form of artistry. Even if you don't have control over the one that shows up on your skin, why can't someone make one up for their family?"

He's intrigued by Rosa's ideas surrounding the soulmarks, and how she doesn't discredit the existing ones, but also the idea that family - and platonic soulmates - can be chosen. It makes him think of the console in the bunker, and the trajectory he'd seen that mimicked something like a star path.

Or a soulmark.

Lost in his thoughts, Michael almost misses Rosa holding up her notebook to what appears to be just a random page in the middle.

"What is that?" Jenna asks, reaching over and leaning the book towards her for a better view.

"I think it's a soulmark. The thing is, it's not my drawing. This is the sketchbook Kyle found at the cabin - I think Jim left it."

From where he's standing, Michael can see there's more on the page than just the soulmark sketch, and he's curious to find out more about it, but Alex beats him to it.

"See these? Jim left coded messages in notes and letters before he died using these symbols, and Kyle and I decoded them - that's how we found out about Caulfield. If the passphrase is the same, it'll be easy to decipher." Alex takes his cell phone out of his pocket and quickly snaps a picture of the sketchbook page. "It's short tho - that's barely a couple of words, maybe a sentence."

Michael watches Alex nod at Kyle a moment before Kyle's cell phone chimes with a new alert. Ever since Caulfield, and especially because of the work Kyle put into helping with Max, Michael is trying to not be such a dick toward him. He doesn't care that Alex seems to have moved past everything that happened in high school, Michael is good at holding a grudge. The constant and relentless way Kyle had bullied and harassed Alex all through high school is not something Michael plans on forgetting but he's willing to accept that Kyle has grown up and is a better person now.

It just doesn't mean he has to be friends with the guy.

"Why does it feel when we get answers to one question, more just pop up in it's place?" Kyle asks, sounding exasperated. "Just once, can we get answers and that just be it?"

Everyone starts filing out after that - Max, Liz, and Rosa first, followed by Kyle who agrees to drop Isobel off at her house on the way. Jenna gently kisses Maria on the cheek before standing up and getting right in Michael's face.

"Come on, cowboy. Let them talk."

Michael glances at Alex and Maria - sitting together on the couch, their heads bowed toward one another, already whispering, their hands wrapped together. He nods at Jenna, and follows her out the front door onto the terrace. As Jenna drops into one of the chairs, Michael sets about lighting the firepit, since he has no idea how long they're going to be out here.

"Maria filled in some details about you and Alex."

"Did she?"

Jenna levels him with a look, and Michael holds up his hands in mock defeat. "Guerin, I'm not here to judge you. Especially over these damn things," she says, pushing back the sleeve of her jacket and revealing the soulmark that compliments Maria's. "But I think I have a better understanding now of your trip to the Pony the other day."

Michael lifts an eyebrow, waiting.

"She and I - it's new. But when we're together, it's like nothing else matters." Michael watches as her gaze drops to her wrist again, fingertips running over the soulmark as she glances back towards the house before looking back at him. "It's like I found something I didn't even know I was looking for."

Maybe Max was right. The more research Michael did, the more he talked to people and looked into these soulmarks, the more he'd been learning that they were meant to guide.

A beacon.

"How does that even work? With the three of you?"

Jenna laughs, shaking her head. "I wouldn't think it any different than what you have with Alex - there's just one more person."

What he has with Alex. Michael doesn't reply, doesn't tell her about how hard the last decade has been because of the decisions Alex made. But he's slightly curious how much Maria has told her, or even what Alex has told Maria.

This game of telephone is getting tiring.

"Alex and I are… complicated."

"It didn't seem that way when you were searching for him while he was missing. Which was honestly hilarious to see after Kyle called you Alex's boyfriend, and Alex didn't deny it."

Michael freezes - _boyfriend_? 

Jenna notices, and continues instead, sparing him having to ask. "This was months ago, when we were searching for our alien serial killer."

Michael quickly does the math in his head, and tries to remember when they'd landed on needing to discover the identity of a fourth alien - the alien that had ended up being Noah. It was around the time of the trip to Texas, when Isobel was still in the pod, back when he and Liz had worked tirelessly in the lab at the hospital developing the serum to save her.

That was around the time Alex had started showing up at the junkyard to talk, and for help. When he'd said he wanted them to be _friends_ and to _start over_.

They hadn't been dating. They hadn't even been sleeping together any more. 

There's an ache in Michael's chest at remembering that day Alex had shown up, at his yelling back at Alex, desperate to know what he wanted. Trying to understand why, no matter how many times Alex left him, Michael always felt like he was waiting for him to return. Because he did - Alex always came back.

But that never erased the pain of Alex leaving in the first place.

At the core though, Michael recognizes the very issue with Jenna's words. That Alex had still been thinking of him in a very specific way, while at the same time keeping space between them.

The door to the house opens then, and Maria walks out onto the terrace, looking less stressed than she had earlier. 

"Ready?" Jenna asks, before turning back to him. "Be good, Guerin."

He nods at Jenna, and smiles at Maria, but doesn’t move from his seat, leaning back and listening to the crunch of the gravel, the purr of a car engine and doors slamming shut, before he finally pushes himself up.

Inside, the hallway is empty. Michael peaks into the study, expecting to see Alex, but to no avail, and continues down towards the living room. When that too is empty, Michael looks into the kitchen, and sees Alex standing at the bay windows that overlook the side yard. 

His hair is sticking up oddly, like he's run his fingers through it so many times it's just landed this way and he hasn't seen himself in a mirror yet. His arms are crossed tight across his chest, and Michael can see his fingers gripping hard, like he needs to be grounded by something. And he notices, though Michael is sure only someone who has spent time around Alex would see, that Alex is favoring his good leg, as if trying to keep his weight off his bad leg - and his prosthetic - as much as possible.

Not knowing if Alex has sensed his presence or not, Michael turns around and heads into the bedroom, retrieving Alex's crutch from where it's leaning against the wall near the bed. 

"Hey, it’s just us now," he tries, holding it out near Alex, hoping he'll take it.

To Michael, the injury has never mattered. It's never changed or altered or affected the way he thinks of Alex, the way he loves him. And he thinks Alex has always appreciated that about him, but he's never been sure because Alex has never talked about it. Sure, he's waved it off with a joke, and Michael has seen how Alex has tried to not show weakness in regards to it. He understands it too, that need to not appear weak to anyone else, and maybe that's why he's also never asked.

Alex's shoulders deflate, and when he turns, Michael can see a bit of glossiness to this eyes as he reaches out and takes the crutch.

But he doesn't use it, Michael notices. For a moment, Alex stands there, staring back at him, and in the next instance Alex is pushing against him, crowding him up against the counter, pressing their bodies together. Distantly, Michael hears the crutch drop against the tile next to them, but all he sees is Alex.

In an instant, Alex's mouth is on his, lips against his own, Alex's hands on his face. And Michael feels helpless, he wants Alex so bad. And kissing Alex, the feel of their bodies flush against one another, Michael wants to be closer still, even as he wraps his arms around Alex's waist and pulls them together. Their clothes are a hindrance, because skin - _skin_ is what Michael is desperate to feel. He wants Alex against him, free from barriers. 

The taste of salt immediately makes Michael pull back and out of the kiss, reaching up and taking Alex's face in his hands, thumbs rubbing against the single tear trail on each of his cheeks.

Not like this, Michael thinks. Not when something is wrong.

But he keeps Alex tight against him, their bodies slotted together perfectly. 

"Talk to me."

Feeling Alex's resistance, Michael loosens his grip, letting Alex disentangle himself, and sit down in the chair at the small table by the window. He immediately sets to work rolling up his pant leg, and Michael pushes himself up onto the counter to wait until Alex is ready to talk.

It's not the first time he's watched Alex handle his prosthetic - there had been so many nights in the Airstream where he'd kneeled on the floor by the bed, and let Alex show him how to properly remove it. All those nights, and Michael realizes he's never gotten a morning where he's gotten to watch Alex put it back on.

Finally, Alex looks up at him.

"Maria told me I was being an idiot," Alex begins, setting the prosthetic off to the side. "That I made the soulmark between us more complicated than it had to be."

"Because you blocked me out?"

Alex nods, the crease in his forehead between his eyebrows immediately appearing. "That summer, watching you spiral, I thought it was my fault. You were there that day, in his path, because of me. You got hurt because I was too weak to fight back. Signing up, even though it was what he wanted, it felt like it gave me power - like maybe I had a way to finally truly get out from underneath him. Like maybe I could be someone who didn't _let_ the people they care about get hurt."

Through the bond now, Michael feels every bit of his anger, his sadness, his anguish. It sits heavily on the bond, and Michael lets it.

"When you deferred your admission to UNM, when you started getting into fights, and you stopped hanging out with Max - all I could think was it was my fault, that I'd been responsible for destroying your chances to get out of this town. So leaving, and muting the bond - it was the only thing that made sense. Maybe without me there, influencing you - distracting you - you could move on and be happy with someone else. Someone who didn't get you attacked and permanently injured." Alex's voice is lower now, but neither of them move from where they're sitting, and perhaps keeping the several feet of distance between them in this moment is good. "The first time I came back, that first time we saw each other after I'd been gone, I almost stayed the whole night."

Michael thinks back to that night, to the Alex that had shown up at the door to the Airstream wearing an Air Force hoodie, and looking self-conscious as he ran a hand through his neatly shorn hair. "Why didn't you?"

"I had drifted off after, and when I woke up, you were tracing my soulmark - just your fingertip back and forth over it. But through the bond, there was this whole range of emotions you were feeling that I didn't understand, and I was too chickenshit to ask."

He doesn't remember everything from that night, but he does remember waking up alone. It felt like the beginning of their horrible pattern over the past decade.

"I felt your fingertip on my skin, and I thought you had to be happy - you had to be after what we'd done, at my showing up. But, that wasn't what I felt. You were just… you were angry, and sad, and you just felt so _resigned_ to everything."

Michael shakes his head, because none of that was sounding accurate, but he has a different question he needs answered first. Something he's been wondering since finding out Alex voluntarily shut off their connection to each other. "If you thought you were the reason I messed up my life, why did you ever come back?"

"I still - I guess I was being selfish. I could just, show up maybe, and it not mean anything. That maybe you'd moved on, and I could just be this part of your past. And if you didn't want me there, you'd tell me to leave." Alex takes a deep breath, but doesn't look at Michael, instead fiddling with the extra fabric now hanging down over the chair. "I tried, you know. When I was stationed elsewhere, when I was overseas, and it never felt the same. Being with someone else always felt like something was missing. And I'd show up, and us being together, it always just _clicked_. You would touch me, and in that moment nothing else in the entire world mattered."

Alex's words make Michael angry, that he'd cut off their connection, that he'd made all these assumptions, and still been unable to move on. That for ten years Michael had assumed the bond was broken, even though he knew he loved Alex, he was willing to take whatever Alex was willing to give.

"I thought," Michael begins, trying to keep his voice even. It's been a long day, he knows they're both tired, he can feel Alex's fatigue through the bond. But they're having this conversation, he's not about to prematurely put an end to it. "Before you left, before you up and made that decision, I had started to believe that maybe this planet could be home. That maybe there was a place for me here. So when you left, when I found the soulmark but it didn't work how I thought it was supposed to - it was like I'd been wrong to hope at all."

"Why did you never say no to me?"

The question hits Michael square in the chest, and he stares back at Alex, their eyes locked. He’d brought up the bad behavior between them that he’d also contributed to, using it as one of the reasons they couldn’t work at the time. Because he knew, saying no to Alex was almost an impossibility for him. Not in the sense that he couldn’t, but that he didn’t want to.

"Because I still wanted whatever scraps you were willing to give me. I thought it was all I was allowed to have."

He feels exhausted, like he's just run a marathon. For a moment he wonders how he's even going to make it back to the Airstream to sleep, because passing out on the nearest horizontal surface is looking like a real good option at the moment, and sleeping in the cab if the truck is not something he's ruling out as a possibility at the moment.

Alex stares at him for a moment before standing up, the crutch helping him make his way across the kitchen until he's standing between Michael's legs. Michael watches as Alex leans his crutch up against the counter, and looks back at him, hands moving from his thighs, up his arms, until they're holding his face, and Michael leans into the feeling of the gentle caress of Alex's thumbs across his cheeks. And Michael can't look away from watching Alex, taking.in the tiredness around his eyes, the way he pulls his lips in between his teeth, the way his hair is still a beautiful mess. Falling in love with Alex Manes is easy, and despite everything they've been through, Michael doesn't regret a second of the moments in between. Because regretting the bad moments, every time Alex has left in the middle of the night, or they've argued over something insignificant in order to not talk about their feelings, would mean cutting out moments that they can learn and grow from to become better.

Neither of them say a word as Alex gently runs his thumbs over Michael's cheeks, his fingertips teasing the curls at the back of his neck. And Michael leans forward, because he just needs to touch and presses his mouth to Alex's, carefully pulling Alex's bottom lip between his before letting it go, their foreheads pushed together.

"I have never regretted loving you," Michael whispers, unable to help himself. He pushes back, just enough so they can look at each other again. "That first time you came back, what you felt-"

"You don't have to explain-"

"I do," Michael insists, because he does. Ten years of not talking, of not making sure the other was on the same page has led them here. And maybe they're just lucky, getting this chance now. But Michael doesn't want to waste it. "I was happy - I don't know that I know how to be anything else where you're concerned. But I was also thinking about how you'd be leaving again. And I was frustrated because our marks _matched_ but I couldn't feel you, we couldn't communicate through the bond that was supposed to exist. I thought it had to be me, ya know? I'm the alien, I'm the one no one has ever wanted. If our connection was broken, if it wasn't working how it was supposed to, it was my fault."

Alex smiles, just a fraction, and Michael lets him lean forward, his hands dropped back down to Michael's thighs to steady himself.

"It's getting late-"

"I should go," Michael immediately interrupts, thinking he understands Alex’s meaning and reaching down for Alex's crutch to hold out to him. 

But Alex ignores it, staring back at him, like Michael has just said something offensive or confusing.

"Alex?"

He watches him take a deep breath, feels the beginning of a tension and apprehension seep back into the emotions Michael can feel through the bond.

"Stay."

The word comes out in a whisper, and Alex's gaze is focused on his hands on Michael's legs. As if he believes he's asking for something he shouldn't, as if the answer will be no.

"Okay."

\----------

The pillows beneath his head are fluffy, the sheets smell of fresh linen, and Michael takes a minute to remember he's not in the Airstream, but at Alex's. He presses his face back into the softness, and takes a deep breath, inhaling the smell of freshly laundered sheets with an undertone of something that is purely _Alex_. 

When he opens his eyes finally, it’s to Alex’s sleeping face across from him. They’d drifted off to sleep wrapped around each other, Alex pressed against his back, and Michael focused on every place their bodies touched. Sure there had been times over the past decade they’d fallen asleep together, many times in that exact same position - but there was a certain new thrill and excitement of knowing that in the morning when he woke up, Alex would still be there.

And here they were. There are quiet snores as Alex sleeps, and Michael feels as though he’s just learned something brand new, even after all these years. The ever present worry lines of Alex’s forehead are gone, and there’s a sense of peace to Alex as he sleeps now, as if it’s the only time he doesn’t carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. His hair is a mess, falling over his face and eyes, but Alex sleeps on unaware, and Michael takes the opportunity to reach out and push back the strands, his fingers lingering for a moment before pulling back.

He wants this. He wants them. Every morning he’s woken up alone, every morning he’s woken up in bed with someone who wasn’t Alex, has only ever made him realize how much he wants to experience this. And the real thing, this moment in front of him, doesn’t disappoint. In fact, it is better than even his own imagination could provide. 

Lately, it’s started to feel like maybe it’s not quite so dangerous to hope. That maybe he can want something, for himself, and maybe it won’t blow up in his face before he gets the chance to enjoy it. Destroying the shed that night had felt like a catharsis, of ridding them both of something that had weighed heavily on them - both as individuals and in terms of them. Since his father's death, in fact, Michael has noticed the smaller changes in Alex, how he's not as likely to be looking over his shoulder, that he seems more free to explore who he is. And despite the fact that he knows what a soldier does in combat situations like the ones Alex has been in, Michael is relieved Alex isn't the one who pulled the trigger, and killed Jesse. He's glad that death doesn't have to personally weigh on Alex's conscience. 

Just as Michael begins to debate the merits of leaving the bed in order to get coffee and breakfast started, he hears Alex suck in more air than usual, his head shift slightly on the pillow, his hands move up to his face as he blinks awake and rubs the remnants of sleep from his eyes. 

"Are you watching me sleep?"

He doesn’t reply, just smiles back at Alex, pushing forward and pressing their lips together quickly, unable to stop the small smile that spreads as he pulls back, laying his head back down on the pillow. Even first thing in the morning, Alex is still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and Michael sometimes wonders what the universe was even thinking when it put the two of them together.

“It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do.”

Alex laughs, reaching out and pressing a hand up against Michael’s chest, pushing playfully at him as he moves to sit up. Michael stays where he is for a moment, falling onto his back, and staring up at the ceiling. He tries not to think too hard about Alex’s reaction, because he’s serious, and he needs Alex to understand that. Maybe it’s something small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but it feels important in the moment. Like he needs Alex to know.

“I mean it,” he says, staring straight up at the white ceiling of the bedroom, one arm behind his head, the other resting on his stomach. “I’d never really thought about it a lot until last year.”

“What about last year?”

“When I woke up that morning in Texas, after Maria and I had hooked up, I was sitting there waiting for her to wake up, and all I could think - the only thing that was going through my mind that morning was how I’d never been able to do that with you.”

Alex is silent, and Michael wonders what he’s thinking. He debates reaching out through the bond to get an idea through Alex’s emotions, but holds back. Instead, he sends his own feelings of hopefulness through instead, confident Alex receives them. 

Suddenly, the bed shifts, and Michael looks over to see Alex has swung his legs over the edge, and is sitting up, reaching for his crutch. Maybe he’d pushed too hard, said too much - it stings, of course. But had he really expected a different outcome?

“Alex.”

He watches him stop, poised to push up off the mattress. Michael isn’t sure where he’s going - the bathroom, the kitchen - but he knows he can’t let Alex walk away from him right now. There’s too much history of them _not_ speaking up, and with everything that’s happened between them recently, all the work it’s felt like they’ve been putting into fixing their issues, it almost feels counterproductive to their progress.

Michael sits up, reaching across the bed, and places a hand over ones of Alex's where it's braced on the mattress. For a moment, his eyes linger on Alex's soulmark, on full display now with Alex's back turned to him.

"Alex?" He tries again.

"When we were seventeen, before it all-" He stops himself, and Michael can see him shaking his head. "I let myself hope, that despite everything else - all the beatings and the abuse at home, the relentless taunting at school - that maybe I could have something good too. That maybe despite everything else, I could be happy too."

Michael considers for a moment, moving so he can see Alex's face as he speaks. But instead stays where he is, keeping his hands on top of Alex's, and simply interlocks their fingers together instead.

"The way you look at me, it has always had the ability to knock the wind out of me. When you look at me, for that moment, nothing else in the world matters. Like the rest of the world doesn't even exist, and it's just us." 

Despite everything Alex is saying, through the bond all Michael can feel coming from Alex is hopefulness. It's happy, it's loving, and Michael lets it flow through. Because he knows too, despite the worst moments of his life, he often feels the same way about Alex.

But why can't Alex look at him now as he speaks? Why is Alex saying these things facing a different direction?

"Sometimes, my words feel insignificant by comparison. I don't quite know-" Alex stops himself, and Michael watches as he first glances down at their joined hands and then quickly up at the ceiling, taking a deep breath that Michael knows he's using to calm himself. "Sometimes I wonder how to be worthy of the way you look at me."

Worthy? Michael can't have that. No one, on this entire planet has been as worthy as Alex. 

He sits up, pushing himself across the rest of the bed and slipping a hand under Alex's chin, gently turning his head so they're looking at each other.

"No one else _on this planet_ is more deserving of my gaze." He takes a deep breath, amazed that Alex isn't pulling away. "Even before the marks showed up, when I had been convinced that having a soulmark - and a soulmate - was useless to me, there was always something about you, pulling me towards you, begging to be known."

"You never wanted one."

Michael hears the way Alex doesn't phrase it as a question, and it hurts, but maybe that's his own fault for never talking to anyone about his childhood growing up. Despite their promises to talk more, to try and be more open with each other, sometimes it still feels as though even Alex doesn't understand how bad his life growing up in the system was.

"No," he admits. "I didn't. But that was because humanity as a whole could get fucked for all I cared."

There's a wave of sadness, overpowering and direct, that Michael is hit with through the bond. And now, instead of holding back, knowing that Alex is keeping the bond open, that despite this conversation, he's sharing in his inner emotions and feelings, Michael envelopes Alex in one of his most cherished memories of him.

"But when I took your guitar from the music room, that day senior year, it was because I needed to answer a question for myself. I needed to know if you were like everyone else, who would fit into the idea in my head of how awful humanity was, or if there was something else I was missing, if there was a reason I felt drawn to you day after day." Michael drops his hand from Alex's face, and looking down between them, takes Alex's hand in-between his own.

"I yelled at you," Alex supplies immediately, then pauses, and Michael glances up. "But I offered you the shed."

He smiles. "Despite my anger, I started to consider that maybe you weren't like the rest of humanity. I hadn't been on the receiving end of that kind of kindness before."

"And showing up at the museum?"

"After Prom, it was like this constant buzz underneath my skin. It was as if something fundamental had shifted inside me, but I didn't understand what." Michael thinks back to those weeks in between, how he'd sneak into the shed late at night and sleep on an old futon that smelled of must, and stare at the band posters on the wall that he knew belonged to Alex. How he'd linger in the hallways at school, or in the parking lot after, just to catch a glimpse of him despite the classes they had together during the day. "Max and I had lunch at the Crashdown, and he was going on about asking Liz out, and he said something about _moments_ , and it was as if something finally clicked."

They've never really discussed anything about those weeks in between Alex offering up the shed, and the events that caused it all to spiral out of their control. He hopes Alex is understanding what he's saying, he's hoping this is leading somewhere good, breaking their bad patterns.

"I didn't consider that we were soulmates, not right away. I was far too jaded for that to even be on my mind - but when I touched you for that first time, when I put my hands on your face, this _calm_ washed over me. And I felt like I'd found the answer to a question I hadn't known I'd been asking."

Alex lets out a deep breath. "So even with everything that happened, you never regretted it?"

"Never." He waits to see if Alex will react at all, and can't help but smile as he watches the smallest upturn of Alex's lips.

There's a slight gurgle, and Michael immediately laughs realizing it's his stomach demanding breakfast. They've been sitting here for so long, they haven't even had coffee yet.

"I'm gonna get in the shower," Alex says, smiling and shaking his head.

"I can make breakfast," Michael immediately offers, thinking of something else he's never been able to do with Alex. It's such a domestic thing, to cook for someone - but there are certain dishes and meals Michael has managed to perfect over the years.

And besides, it's almost impossible to screw up breakfast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who is still reading, who has left kudos and comments, and to all the people who have subscribed (I never expected that and I am in awe of people looking forward to my updates) - THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael starts finding answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Circling back to the plot, finally. :)
> 
> Just a heads up, I did make some additions to the tags for this chapter.

Michael didn’t like this idea.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Alex, because he did. He trusted Alex with his life. But there had to be a line, and this was definitely close to crossing it. He knew they needed more information about what Jesse Manes had been involved in, and what Project Shepherd had been involved in with regards to the soulmarks, and he knew that with Jesse dead there was only one option left for them to get answers. Alex had told him about the Project Shepherd bunker located on the grounds of the old Walker Air Force Base. He didn’t need to know anything else about it, becoming aware of its existence had been more than enough, and it was somewhere Michael knew he never wanted to set foot in. It’s very existence was to hunt down his people, nothing good could ever come of him stepping foot there, of that he was sure. 

He cuts the engine of his truck, but didn’t move, his gaze set on the building and the double cellar doors that Alex had described to him as the entrance. There's one other vehicle parked nearby - Alex's familiar SUV, but regardless it doesn't help the apprehension he feels about the whole situation. Realistically, he knows Alex can feel everything through the soulmate bond, is probably watching him on some surveillance camera right now.

Following Alex's instructions, he finally makes his way to the cellar door, partially hidden by brush, and pulls it open, descending the stairs and letting the heavy metal fall shut behind him. The stairwell is lit from a light below, and Michael follows down a concrete hallway to an open doorway - two heavy steel doors propped open. He stops just inside, and immediately notices Alex's back to him, sitting across the room in front of a wall of computer monitors.

It's good to know no one can sneak up on them.

"Welcome to the top secret alien hunting op, right?" Michael jokes, he can't help it. The entire place, it's whole existence is to locate and lock up him and his people.

Alex's head drops slightly, and Michael watches as he spins around in the office chair to face him to stand up. Even from across the room, Michael can see the lines on Alex's forehead, the furrowed brow, and he itches to reach out and smooth it away. His hair is messier than normal, and Michael wonders if Alex is as nervous as he is, though perhaps for different reasons. Their relationship is getting better, day by day, as the two of them learn to trust in each other, and to use the bond, and to start believing they can make this work between them. He wants nothing else than for the chance to be with Alex again, even if it's something new that doesn't resemble the way they've fallen together in the past. He has no trouble admitting that he doesn't want them to fall back into those unhealthy patterns, he wants them on equal footing.

Through the bond, Michael feels Alex, his nervousness and apprehension, and knows Alex feels his own back. There's something else there too though, a calmness that Michael is sure is attributed to his own presence, something he can't deny he also feels from being near Alex.

The bunker is cold and dark, drab concrete walls and steel support beams. Even the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling can't liven the space up, and for that Michael finds himself grateful. At least this place doesn't pretend to be anything except exactly what it is.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

Michael nods. "I want answers."

He crosses the room, ignoring the conference table, where there are books and folders and USGS and star charts spread out. He hops the steps up to where Alex is, and stands in front of him. For a moment, they just watch each other, eyes locked, and Michael sometimes doesn't know who makes the first move between them, it always feels like they move in sync, gravity pulling them together. Closing the space, Michael presses their lips together quickly, knowing it can't be anything else than just the quick physical contact he knows they both need at the moment. Their foreheads knock together, as they continue breathing in the same air, leaning into each other. He listens to the deep breaths Alex takes, and is reminded about what he'd said that day at the Long Farm about the way he smelled, and wonders if there is something there in that familiarity that Alex is seeking out.

An alarm beeps on the computer behind them, causing Alex to push away and turn around to glance at the monitors, his shoulders visibly dropping. Michael makes a mental note to ask about that day at the Long Farm later, watching as Alex pulls away to silence the alarm.

"Shit," Alex mutters, and Michael walks toward him, glancing at the monitors to see what's happening because there is nothing in today's plans that should warrant a reaction like that.

At least, Michael doesn't think so.

He doesn't recognize the truck that's pulled in, but he definitely knows the people who get out.

"Is that Clay?"

Alex doesn't move, but Michael can feel the frustration he feels bursting through the bond.

"I thought he left after the funeral. I thought he was  _ gone _ ."

The tone of Alex's voice makes Michael realize he's been taken by surprise, that he's unprepared to deal with two of his brothers today. 

"Is Clay involved in any of this?"

Alex shakes his head. "Not that I could find. After being surprised by Flint at Caulfield, I did more digging - I should have been smarter about this."

He trusts Alex. He's here, standing in the middle of a room designed specifically for organizing hunting down and imprisoning his own people, because of Alex.

It's quiet as they listen to the footsteps down the stairs, and the creaks as the doors are pushed open.

Even in school, he'd never gotten used to the whole identical twin thing, and was never surprised when he'd heard about people getting the two of them mixed up.

"I cannot believe you still have that truck!" Clay exclaims immediately, walking in and crossing the room toward them, reaching his hand out for him to shake. "You had that thing in high school!"

Michael shrugs, but he feels unsure and unsteady, and the apprehension coming off Alex isn't helping his own nerves settle. When he glances over, he notices that Flint and Alex are outright glaring at one another across the room.

Clay shakes his head, reaching over and patting Alex on the shoulder. "You two, seriously."

"Is Clay your bodyguard now," Alex snaps, shrugging Clay's hand off.

Michael watches Flint laugh, leaning against the railing in front of him. "Is Michael Guerin  _ yours _ ?"

Clearly not wasting  _ that _ opportunity.

"So who wants to tell me what exactly this place is, since Flint almost blindfolded me into secrecy?"

Clay's words catch Michael off guard - why had Flint brought him here if he didn't know the truth yet? Or was there a chance Clay was trying to get one over on them? Michael didn't know a whole lot about the fourth Manes brother, and Alex rarely spoke of him. 

"Shut up, Clay," Flint barked, crossing the room, staring at Alex. "Why don't you tell us why you thought it was smart to bring an alien here?"

"A  _ what _ ?"

Ignoring Clay's question, Flint stops near the end of the conference table, and nods up toward the monitors along the wall.

"Why don't you tell us how you realized you fucked up killing dad because you needed answers from him. That now you want to know more about your soulmark, but the person who could have answered them is dead."

Michael tries to keep his focus on Alex, but when he catches a glimpse of Clay, he's unsurprised to find him looking confused, as though just like Greg, he'd never been brought in on the Manes Family Secret. He knows that Alex found out on his own, starting with finding the console piece in Jim Valenti's hunting cabin. 

Without thinking about it, Michael floods the bond, knowing that he can't risk physically showing Alex affection at the moment, that Flint will no doubt use it against him. He wraps Alex in his own feelings of safety and protection and love, so Alex knows he's right here to lean on. His mind however, feels like it's screaming for Alex to be careful, because Michael can't watch something else happen to Alex right now. The memory of the way Flint had attacked Alex in order to kidnap him in his own home still sometimes plays on repeat in his mind, keeping Michael awake.

"Alex has a-" Clay starts, head whipping around from Flint to Alex, and then quickly over to Michael. "That makes sense."

"He killed dad, Clay. Focus."

Clay rolls his eyes. " _ Greg _ killed dad. He told me himself."

"Greg's as compromised as Alex is."

Michael has no idea what Flint's reasoning is to having brought Clay along. He wonders if Flint assumed his own twin would just automatically side with him, no matter what the actual truth was. And judging from Alex’s reaction to their appearance at the bunker, this visit is unexpected and unwanted.

"Compromised  _ how _ ?"

"Dad believed the soulmarks were a way that allowed the alien invaders, the ones that crashed here in 1947, to control humans."

Clay shook his head. "How would dad know?"

"Because that's what great-grandpa Harlan told him," Alex replies instead, surprising Michael. "Isn't it, Flint?"

Clay puts up his hands, almost in a plea for both of his brothers to stop talking, and shakes his head. "Time out here. This is a lot you're throwing around." After a moment, Clay lowers his hands, and looks back over at Flint, raising one hand again and pointing towards Michael. "You're saying  _ Michael Guerin _ , the kid who was homeless in high school and spent his free time at the junkyard, is some sort of evil alien invader who crash landed here with the intent of specifically controlling Alex through a soulmark they both have?"

Flint doesn't reply, and Michael wonders if when it's laid out that way, he realizes how ridiculous it sounds.

"When did your soulmark show up, Alex?"

There's a moment of silence in the room, where Michael can hear the breathing of the other three as clearly as his own. He keeps his focus on Flint and Clay, and doesn't risk looking over af Alex, despite the urge to see him.

"When I was seventeen."

Michael watches Clay's eyes go back and forth before landing solidly on Flint.

"You always did want to be his favorite."

"I was being a good  _ son _ ," Flint snaps back, taking a step forward before Clay is reaching out pushing him back with his hand. "Which is more than you ever did, Alex."

The anger from Alex rolls through the bond in waves, and Michael has to concentrate not to let it affect him. He's spent years perfecting his control over his abilities, not letting them dominate in high stress situations anymore, and he's mostly succeeded - the last time he lost control was on Max after Caulfield. An accident he still regrets, even if Max doesn't hold it against him. So he takes everything Alex is feeling, and lets it flow through the bond. He can't physically comfort Alex on this moment, not with Flint around, so this is the next best thing.

"You forgetting the part where you kidnapped me and helped him keep me locked up so he could try and use my soulmark for his own vendetta?"

Clay spins around on Flint at Alex's words, eyes wide.

"You did  _ what _ ?"

"The experiment was never meant to hurt Alex! Dad's theory from the Caulfield research suggested that there was a way to remove the bond, to free the human from the alien's control. He was trying to  _ help _ !"

Michael feels sick. 

He doesn't have much to go off in regards to soulmates losing their other half, and having to keep living on. But he does know that according to Alex's research, his mom had a soulmark and a soulmate, and most likely lived seventy years inside Caulfield never getting to see that person again. It makes him think of those ten miserable years he’d spent believing there was something wrong with him, with the bond he shared with Alex, and wonders what it was like for his mother, locked up in Caulfeild and if she spent those years being able to feel and communicate with her soulmate. Had their entire relationship been reduced to sending comforting thoughts and emotions to each other?

He remembers the pain he'd felt in the empty warehouse, the way his soulmark had felt like fire against his skin. Had Jesse Manes almost succeeded that day in killing him?

The only positive to all of this is that Alex's worry about Clay's presence seems to have been premature. So far, Michael doesn't detect any hostility in Clay Manes' behavior, just confusion over what's been going on that he's never been told about. But he's not discounting Alex's reaction to seeing Clay show up with Flint, and knows to not trust what he's seeing.

"No one had succeeded in severing the bond before. To remove the alien control over it's human partner. Dad was going to be the first - he was so close." Flint keeps speaking as though the actions he'd participated in were somehow noble and just. "The bond is already such a rare phenomenon, he hypothesized it is the fastest and easiest way to find these  _ invaders _ and their descendants."

Michael frowns at that, because the bond, even for how rare it is, has been around longer than just for the last seventy years. But he realizes belatedly that Flint used the words  _ descendants _ , meaning not him and Max and Isobel, but the children who have resulted in the years afterwards. Like Maria.

"They were refugees," Michael spits out, needing to correct Flint, needing to stop hearing the word  _ invaders _ spoken like they hadn't been running from something, like they hadn't been trying to escape  _ something _ on their home planet. Something had made them come here, something had made them pick this planet, but it wasn't to  _ invade _ . "And your people  _ hunted _ them, and locked them up. Because that's what  _ you do _ to those seeking help. You  _ lock them up _ like they're the enemy."

"Flint?" Clay asks, staring at his brother, clearly having known none of this before walking through those doors.

His telekinesis is thrumming beneath his skin, itching to be released. And he knows he can keep it under control, knows there is nothing that could happen in this hole in the ground to make him lose his grip over his powers. He's spent too many years perfecting his hold over it for  _ Flint Manes _ to be the reason he lets go.

"You know how dad knew it had to be possible?" Flint asks, ignoring Clay's question and shifting his gaze from Michael over to Alex. "Because grandpa Harlan did it once. Used the alien to find the human under their control, and free them."

"You're lying," Alex snaps back. "I've seen the same records you have - you know the human soulmate died as a result." 

Flint laughs, an unexpected reaction, if Michael is being honest. 

"But the records don't tell you who that human was, do they?" 

Michael freezes, staring at Alex. Because he remembers Alex coming to him with the information he'd found on his mother, and her soulmark. All he'd been able to find was that the soulmate had been human and had died - there hadn't been any indication about who the soulmate was. There had to have been a reason no name was assigned to the human soulmate, Michael knew.

"It was great-uncle Tripp."

Alex's eyes go wide for a moment, before he shakes his head.

"Of course," Michael hears him sigh. "That's why there's transcription errors in the AAR." 

Out of the corner of his eye, Michael sees movement - Clay taking a step towards his brother, his brow furrowed like he's working out a puzzle. 

"Great-grandpa Harlan killed his own brother?"

Flint reels around on him. "He was compromised _ ,  _ Clay. What else was he supposed to do?"

"I don't-" Clay stares at his brother, and Michael can see the cracks forming now, the hurt in everything he's realizing Flint has been involved in.

It takes a moment too long for Michael to realize Clay is pleading with Flint not to kill Alex and Greg the same way.

"Why do you think we took Alex? The problem, dad hypothesized, was that grandpa Harlan used the alien, not the human. But Alex is  _ fine _ . The experiment  _ worked _ , and we could go further."

Michael is starting to wonder how long before Flint tries to attack him so he can start this phase of the plan to rid the Manes Men of their soulmarks. Because he already doesn't feel safe in this bunker to begin with, but now he's in here with someone who also clearly doesn't mind if he gets locked back up in a cell like his mother was - so long as he can experiment on him.

What kind of experiments had they done on his mother during her time at Caulfield? And if Tripp Manes had been her soulmate, why hadn't he tried to free her? Get her out of that place?

"Further like, kill Michael Guerin  _ further _ ?" Clay asks, his voice cold and demanding, and Michael swallows back everything he was about to unleash. "And then what?"

"And then Alex would have been free."

It happens too quickly for him to react, Michael watching as Clay reels around, landing one good solid hit against Flint, who goes tumbling toward the ground - hitting his head hard on the concrete. After a moment, Clay leans down, checking to make sure Flint is still breathing before glancing up towards Alex.

"He'll be fine."

\--------

Michael watches over the next several days as Alex starts to pull away again, the bond seemingly going quiet and empty, remnants of the decade Alex had spent keeping his side muted. Except now, Michael had to fight the urge to push on it until Alex changes his mind and lets him in. But he's afraid of provoking too much, of saying the wrong thing and ruining this tentative new beginning of theirs.

Instead, he tries something else, inviting Alex to the junkyard with the intention of showing him the completed console. Because he can't let Alex pull away and shut him out, not now, not after all the work they've started putting into being together.

He watches from the side as Alex runs his fingers over the console, as it lights up and shimmers as he goes, bursts of purples following his movements. 

"You finished it," Alex finally says, speaking up, but not looking at him. And there's the first feeling through the bond in days - sadness and resignation. 

Michael realizes he thinks he’s still planning on leaving. That those plans to build a ship and ride off into the ether are still a reality, still something Michael wants. It's a realization that breaks Michael's heart, has him stepping closer, pushing more forcefully onto the bond to make Alex understand how wrong he is.

"I'm not leaving," he replies, staring at Alex who won't look up at him, who won't look away from the console. "I thought you knew that-"

"You told me! You said you were going to attach it to a vehicle the last time we were down here."

_ Fuck. _ He doesn't want a fight. He doesn't want this. But the last time they'd been down here together had been months ago. Before Alex had finally released his iron grip of control over the bond. Back when Michael had been convinced there was something wrong with himself, because the bond never worked how be thought it should, like how Max had always described it. Things were different now.

"That was months ago. That was when I thought you didn't want me anymore, that you were telling me to move on. That all we'd ever be was friends."

Finally, Alex looks up at him glossy-eyed, the crinkle between his eyebrows back. "I've never wanted to be  _ just friends _ with you, Michael."

He watches, dumbfounded, as Alex's gaze drifts back to the console, where his hand is laying flat against it. And he feels it, the moment Alex disappears, because confusion spikes through the bond, and Michael wonders what Alex is seeing. He's tempted to put his hand on the console, join Alex in whatever the piece of technology is showing him, but decided against it. Leans back against the desk, and waits.

Twice now he's accessed something within the console, and he's still desperate to try again, to see if he can see the vision of his mother again. If the console shows him nothing else ever again, he would be okay with that - he just wants to see her again.

It takes a couple minutes before Alex comes out, stumbling back and away from the table, unsteady on his feet. Michael is too slow, too far away, and watches him trip, not being able to get the right footing to stay upright, tumbling to the floor before Michael can reach out with his telekinesis and stop it. But in an instant, Michael is falling beside him, hands framing Alex's face, staring into his eyes, wondering what happened, what did Alex see.

But Alex is quiet, his eyes wide as he surges forward, slamming their mouths together. It's rough and desperate, and Michael pushes back into Alex with the same hunger. He loves kissing Alex, loves the feeling of his lips, the barest reminder of stubble on his face, the way Alex always makes the tiniest sounds, moans that never fail to drive Michael crazy.

They pull apart, both gasping for air, and Alex just stares back at him, beautiful dark eyes watching him, transfixed.

"What was-"

"I'm sorry," Alex says over him. "For blocking you out. For thinking -  _ for believing _ \- that it was better that way."

Michael stares at him, confused. What did Alex sre when he touched the console? When he'd done it, he'd seen his mother, he'd seen star patterns and constellations. He'd felt peace, happiness, he'd come back to reality, out of the pull of the console, thinking only of Alex.

"What did you-"

Alex smiles at him, pushing forward again, pressing their lips together gently, and Michael goes. Melts into the touch as Alex slides his hands into his hair, tugging at the curls.

"You never figured it out?" Alex asks, pulling back to look at him, smiling wide and beautiful.

"Figured  _ what _ out?"

"It's a library. There's so many, Michael - galaxies undiscovered by humans, it's amazing. And in all that, all those millions of places," Alex pauses, glancing quickly up at the console on the table before looking back at him. 

And Michael realizes Alex has figured out something he'd missed, too focused on the images of his mother, on just being able to see her again, that he hadn't understood the real purpose of the console piece in front of him.

"In all those millions of galaxies," Alex continues, the wonder evident in his voice, and Michael feels it through the bond as well. But there's an undertone, darker and hesitant, just below the surface that Michael focuses on, prods at, needing to know what's the cause of it.

"We're in there?"

Alex smiles back at him, nodding.

There are so many questions he has about the console now - why did his mother have it when she traveled here? Were his people aware of what it was? How did they ever become in possession of it? But there's no one left to answer them.

"You didn’t see it? Our soulmark?”

Michael shakes his head, because he hadn’t. But he hadn’t known what he was looking for, he’d been so preoccupied looking for a way to see his mother again. But he’s fascinated that Alex had, that something had allowed Alex to concentrate enough to find it, to see it.

He looks up, toward the console, realizing what Alex is saying about what the console shows someone who interacts with it.

“You said Jim Valenti had that piece you gave me?”

Alex nods, looking at him curiously, and Michael knows he’s trying to figure out what he’s thinking about, the conclusion he’s coming to, trying to keep up.

“Do you think he knew?”

“It’s possible - he had it hidden beneath his hunting cabin. Even the bunker entrance was covered by a table - you had to know what you were looking for to find it.”

“Can you show me?”

He watches Alex shift, reaching into his pocket and retrieving his cell phone, tapping away at the screen before turning it around for Michael to see. It’s a photo of the page from Rosa’s notebook from the other day, the handwritten symbols from the console below a drawing of a soulmark.

“Kyle and I tried to decode the writing, we assumed it was something Jim Valenti had left to be found - he had to have written it in Rosa’s sketchbook for a reason.” Alex flips the phone back around, and taps at the screen again, before showing it again to him. There’s handwriting on the photo now, symbols circled and numbers and letters written below them, revealing a set of coordinates.

“Where does it lead?” Michael asks immediately, curious as to where it could lead, and why Jim Valenti would leave something like this to be found.

Alex turns the phone screen off, and slides it back into his pocket. “It’s for out near the cabin - I just haven’t had time to drive out and see for myself what is there.”

Michael smiles up at him. “Well, let’s go then.”

It’s a bit of a drive out to the old hunting cabin that Jim Valenti used to own, and Michael’s never been to it. He lets Alex drive, trying to make himself comfortable in the passenger seat of the SUV, watching the buildings and the landscape pass by as they head out of town. Neither of them talk much on the ride, Alex’s focus on the road, but Michael can feel him through the bond - he’s calm, but he’s anxious, and Michael assumes it’s in regards to learning what it is Jim Valenti left for them all to find. 

The other question is why did Jim Valenti leave the coordinates in a sketchbook that belonged to Rosa? Though they don’t know when exactly he wrote them down, and it was entirely possible it had been left there before she died, though it’s also possible he’d written them there afterwards some time, hopeful Alex or Kyle would piece together all of the puzzle he was leaving behind.

“Kyle told me, when Jim was sick, he had this thing he’d repeat,  _ if you see the handprint go to Manes _ ,” Alex says, when they’ve been in the car for about fifteen minutes. “Kyle thought he was just talking nonsense, the brain cancer was so pronounced, and didn’t think anything of it again until Liz came back to town. But he didn’t come to me - he went to my father.”

This is new information, things he’s never heard before. And Michael feels his anger rising because - was this not important for him to know? That Kyle had potentially put him, put Max and Isobel, in danger?

“He didn’t know what it meant, at the time. Told me later, hadn’t even considered coming to me because he’d remembered our parents being friends, so he just assumed.” Michael watches as Alex shakes his head, eyes still focused on the road in front of him. “It was an honest mistake.”

The car goes quiet again, until Alex pulls off the main road onto a dirt road, following it past fields and trees, and pulls up in front of a log cabin. It’s small - appearing on the outside to only be maybe two or three rooms inside. Obviously not a main residence for anyone, a perfect out of the way hunting cabin for the town sheriff. The grass around the structure is overgrown, spreading out into the fields all around. There’s a small stockpile of wood on the porch beneath one of the windows, something that looks as though it needs replenishing soon if anyone is going to spend any significant amount of time at the cabin.

“Quaint,” he says, unable to stop himself as he slams the passenger door closed, turning to glance at Alex, who's tapping away on his cell phone, looking around like he's searching for something specific.

"Let's find whatever it is first." Alex starts walking off past the left side of the cabin, and Michael hurries to catch up, grabbing a shovel on his way, and falling in step next to Alex as they tread through the grass. 

Michael tries not to think too hard about what could possibly need to be hidden so far out here, what would need to be. But based on what Alex had told him, Jim Valenti had hid the console piece in a hidden bunker in a little used hunting cabin, so the man clearly hadn't been one for taking chances it would end up in the wrong hands easily. And he finds that he's grateful the old sheriff seems to have understood the importance of keeping the technology of his people hidden - but Michael still can't help but wonder  _ why that piece _ .

He's so wrapped up on his own thoughts, he misses when Alex has stopped walking, almost slamming into him as a result, and tries to not fall on his ass trying to not run into Alex.

"This is it," Alex finally says, slipping his phone back into his pants pocket, and pointing at the ground.

Michael gets to work, breaking ground and removing earth, hoping whatever they are looking for isn't too deep. 

"You wanna talk about it?" He asks instead, tired of the quiet between them, his mind drifting to the confrontation with Flint and Clay that is obviously the reason Alex is on edge.

"About what?"

"Flint, and what he said the other day. I just thought-"

"I'm fine."

Michael scoffs, slamming the shovel into the ground. He knows Alex is very much  _ not fine _ , and he thought they were getting past this, past everything that made them not talk to one another. He wants, more than anything, to be understanding but shutting him out for several days and then today making every silence between them feel awkward in a way their interactions haven't in months is getting to him.

He pushes down the urge to get angry, to yell and demand Alex open up to him. 

The shovel hits something metal, and Michael immediately glances up at Alex before dropping it, reaching out with his telekinesis instead to uncover the remainder. It turns out to be an old ammunition can, and Michael drops it on the soft grass next to their feet and falls to the ground, flipping the locks and opening it up, curiosity getting the better of him.

Inside, there's two necklaces, and an envelope. Michael holds one of the necklaces in his palm, stares at the intricate pattern, and tries to remember why he knows it, why it's just on the tip of his tongue in familiarity. Alex takes the letter, falling to the ground next to him, and opens it up, sliding a piece of paper out and unfolding it.

_ Protect this piece. Hide it somewhere it cannot be found. The rest is useless without this but our journey, our sacrifice, will not be for nothing. _

_ They may figure it out some day. I do not wish them to know nothing about the journey we made to ensure their future. To protect our people and their history.  _

Michael barely hears Alex as he concentrates on the necklace, determined to remember where he's seen it before.

"This has got to be talking about the piece Jim hid in the cabin," Alex says finally, and Michael glances over quickly to see him sliding the note back into the envelope. "You said you were refugees, that you were coming here to get away from something-"

Michael shakes his head. "That's what Noah told us, dunno how much truth there was to it."

Gathering everything up, they head back to the cabin, and Michael follows Alex inside. There's a living room, complete with uncomfortable looking furniture, and kitchen off to the side. He places the can on the table in the middle of the room, and is about to sit down on the couch when-

"Hold on. Help me move the table first," Alex says motioning to it as he stands off to one side. Michael nods, shuffling around and getting a grip on it, lifting with Alex to reveal a heavy concrete door underneath with locks.

"Town sheriff went all out, didn't he."

Alex kneels down, twisting the locks and pulling the hatch open, and Michael can see a ladder but it is pitch dark below. He watches Alex descend, the careful movements because of his leg, before following him down.

By the time his boots his solid ground, Alex has already flipped the light switch, revealing a complete bedroom set for a teenage girl, and Michael is  _ slightly _ creeped out by the whole thing.

"What the hell?"

Alex glances over at him, and back at the furniture. "He designed this to help Rosa get clean."

That doesn't help the creepiness factor, but Michael also assumes Alex has spoken to Rosa since her resurrection, and they've talked about what went on here. He doesn't have the brain capacity at the moment to imagine being locked down here with no way out. Because it sounds like a fantasy from some of the worst places he'd been homed as a kid.

Alex walks off to the side, and pulls a painting off the wall, revealing a hole in the concrete.

"This is where Jim hid that piece of the console."

Michael is thankful for something else to focus on.

"And there was nothing else with it?"

Alex shakes his head. "That's why I wasn't sure about it for the longest time. Because it was just here, by itself. Took me weeks to finally start piecing everything together."

Michael remembers that time, the way Alex had been avoiding him, like he didn't want anything to do with him anymore. Before he'd shown up at the junkyard after Texas, after Michael had made the attempt to move on, to respect what he thought Alex wanted. That conversation in the junkyard that day felt like the first time in their long history where everything was finally out in the open.

Instead, it turned out Alex had still been hiding things from him.

"It still amazes me that you have never gotten angry at me for keeping this secret from you," Michael says, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "For finding out I'm an alien and basically just shrugging your shoulders. When I came clean to Maria-"

"Yeah, she told me." Michael wonders if she told him about how angry she'd been, how stupid he'd acted, so desperate for her to understand. "But I still knew more than she did, and a lot sooner. She had a lot of reason to feel the way she did, not just at you, but at me and Liz as well."

That's news to him, but then again, he is aware of how many friends he doesn’t have to be able to understand how that worked out between the three of them.

"And I never just  _ shrugged my shoulders _ ." Alex walks back over the ladder, placing a hand on a rung, and letting out a deep breath. "I spent those two months overthinking everything related to you."

Michael needs to know what changed. He'd never asked before, even that day they'd sat around the fire pit at the junkyard, he'd just accepted that Alex had a change of heart, and Alex had never offered up if there was a reason he'd decided to show up that morning.

"So what made you show up that morning? Wanting to talk?"

"Kyle. He said - he reminded me that I know who you are, and it wasn't the terrorist file my father had put together on you."

Of course Jesse Manes would label him a terrorist,  _ of fucking course _ .

They climb back up the steps in silence, replacing the coffee table, and Michael collapses on the sofa, pulling the necklace out of his pocket again to look at it. It's silver, round, with a pattern etched into the metal. He knows he's seen it before, he knows it somewhere in his memories-

"My mother," he realizes, saying the words out loud, the memory of Caulfield flooding his mind. She had held her hand up to the glass, and shared those happy memories and emotions with him - and he'd seen her as she'd been when he was a child.

Wearing this necklace.

"What?"

He holds up the necklace, excited to have remembered why it was familiar.

"In Caulfield, when she spoke to me, she showed me us from before the crash," he runs his fingers across the etching, tracing it over and over again, curious as to its meaning. "In the memory, she was wearing this necklace."

Alex holds up the second one out of the can. "And the second one?"

"Louise?"

He feels excited suddenly, something new to learn about his mother, about wherever they were from. Finally, something that doesn't feel tied to sadness, but perhaps he can finally learn why she made the decision to leave, to take him, and to travel across the galaxy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! <3


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